
Class 
Book. 



/ /^ i/^/ 



GopiyriglitN 



„ IHI? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Industrial (and) 
Vocational Education 

Universal (Sn3 Self 
Sustaining 

(Pagan versus Christian Civilizations) 
By^ S. H; COMINGS 



SECOND EDITION 
Revision ^iiS Supplement by 

Mrs. S. H. (Lydia J. Newcomb) Comings 



7(R!ST0PjfEI( 

PUBUSHING 

HOUSE 

BOSTON 






Copyright, igis 
By The Christopher Pubi,ishing House 



AUG 12 1915 



/ 



t 
iCI,A410088 



Dedicated 



TO ALL WHO WOULD SEE THE SUPREME AMBITION 
OF OUR CIVILIZATION TURNED FROM THE EFFORT TO 
DEVELOP THINGS, TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HIGH- 
EST POSSIBLE AVERAGE TYPE OF MANHOOD AND 
WOMANHOOD; AND TO ALL WHO WOULD SEE LABOR 
SPIRITUALIZED, AND MAN's CREATIVE ATTRIBUTE 
CHANGED FROM THE IDEAL OF DEGRADATION TO THAT 
OF COMMUNION WITH EACH OTHER, AND WITH THE 
INFINITE. 



Introduction to Second Edition 

I HAVE been asked to write an introduction to 
this reprint of Mr. Comings' little book on In- 
dustrial Education. I do so very willingly. In 
the first place, I had the pleasure of knowing Mr. 
Comings personally, and the discrimination to esteem 
him very highly. Through a certain community in 
our educational ideas Mr. Comings was moved to 
write to me and later to invite me to visit him at Fair- 
hope. This must have been at least eight years ago, 
that is to say, in 1907. In November of that year I 
found it possible to accept the invitation. I spent a 
happy week with Mr. and Mrs. Comings at The 
Gables. The visit was timely — a little later, and my 
host would not have been there to welcome me, and 
the opportunity of knowing him would have been 
lost. As it was, his health was already failing. But 
his mind was alert, and his interest in the possibility 
of self-supporting industrial schools and colleges was 
eager and intelligent. And the visit was timely for a 
second reason. During the week of my visit, Mrs. 
Johnson began the Organic School. She had only 
three pupils, if I remember rightly, but her equip- 
ment was superb — it consisted of all outdoors ! 

And in the second place, my willingness to write 
springs from the fact that with Mr. Comings' major 
thesis, that self-supporting institutions are vastly 
more desirable than endowed institutions, I so heart- 



8 INTRODUCTION 

ily agree. Given the choice, I should hardly have used 
his title, Pagan versus Christian Civilizations, for it 
seems to me unduly to indict the one, and quite as 
unduly to overpraise the other. I recall, as every 
student must, the cheer and courage so freely given 
by many a sturdy old pagan writer. But the contrast 
which he implies, as between industrial exploitation 
on the one hand, and a moral bread-labor on the 
other, seems to me very well taken. It marks a gen- 
uine and just distinction. It is the charge which 
socialism brings against every capitalistic order. 

In turning to Mr. Comings' little book, the reader 
must value it for what it is, and must not allow him- 
self to dwell upon what it is not. It is not, for exam- 
ple, systematic. It could not easily claim to be well 
arranged. It is all too full of repetitions. The lit- 
erary style is not always good. But when all these 
defects have been freely admitted, it still remains 
true that the book has a vital message and that it is 
well worth reading. 

In advocating Industrial Education, Mr. Comings 
kept always in mind the sane injunction that those 
who work should think and those who think should 
work. It is in this union of action and thought that 
moral health resides. He advocated such an educa- 
tion not alone on the utilitarian ground that every 
man should be prepared to earn his own living, but 
on the larger and more immediate ground that hand 



INTRODUCTION 9 

work is itself an integral part of any true education, 
and that only by making education self-supporting 
can it be made universal and can the burden of its 
support be lifted from the bent shoulders of those 
whose labors now make educational endowments 
profitable. Mr. Comings was not averse to endow- 
ments of a wholesome sort, but to be wholesome he 
felt that the endowment should be spent in creating 
a practical industrial plant through whose operation 
the students could earn their own living, rather than 
that the endowment should be hoarded in the shape 
of dividend-paying investments. And he urged this 
more immediate use of educational funds because, as 
I have said, he had the insight to see that young peo* 
pie are not truly educated unless they are taught to 
combine purposeful activity with constructive 
thought; and because he had the humanity to realize 
that it is a very unideal arrangement to educate one 
set of people while another exploited set unwillingly 
pays the bills. I am not sure that Mr. Comings would 
have called himself a socialist, or even, though he 
lived in Fairhope, a single-taxer, but I am very sure 
that his educational teaching is very sound socialism. 
This scheme of a self-supporting education has never 
been realized. It may be that in the secondary schools 
it would not be possible to realize it. The labor ot 
children under conditions at all ideal is not highly 
productive. But I am led to believe from my own 



lo INTRODUCTION 

large experience with well-to-do children that the cur- 
rent plan of doing everything for them is out-and-out 
unkindness. There is a wholesome compromise be- 
tween this extreme and the other extreme represented 
by child labor. It lies, I think, in having children do 
everything they possibly can for themselves, and then 
every day something of real service for the gen- 
eral good of the household. The economic gain 
would not be large, but the moral gain would be tre- 
mendous. Even the economic gain, however, would 
not be negligible. It would be the negative gain of 
keeping down expenses, of reducing the number of 
servants, of lessening destruction. All that is needed 
is to mix a little very elementary psychology with the 
plan of work. Children hate to do things alone, hate 
to be told to do things that they do not quite know 
how to do. But in the company of a merry, sympa- 
thetic grown-up, who both shares and explains the 
work, a child not wholly spoiled becomes an eager 
and efficient worker. 

My own boys vary in age from ten to eighteen 
years. Many of them are wealthy, all have moderate 
means. I am preparing them for college. But if I 
were asked to name their greatest need, I would say 
unhesitatingly, an increased sense of service. Too 
much has been done for them, too little has been re- 
quired. If I return to the planet earth in another 
incarnation I pray the gods to send me into a family 



INTRODUCTION ii 

of such modest means that I shall be required to do 
my full share ; or of such unusual wisdom that I shall 
be allowed to ! 

The work of children can hardly be utilized eco- 
nomically in the ordinary secondary school. It can 
helpfully be used in the negative way already indi- 
cated, to keep down expense, — used in tidying up the 
rooms, attending the fires, making minor repairs, 
binding old books, maintaining and beautifying the 
school grounds. If the teacher will lead, the children 
will follow. The better field for children's work is 
at home, or in those simple residence schools which 
are really schools, and not merely money-making ho- 
tels. It is even possible to have children work gain- 
fully and to do it wholesomely, if the work is suited 
to their strength and is carried out in the love and 
shelter of a family group. Many of the operations 
of farm and garden are within a child's strength. 
The objection to child labor is not to child labor as 
such, — labor is wholesome for all of us,— but to the 
fact that the conditions are extremely bad and the 
hours cruelly long. But one must not imagine that 
the cotton mills are the only sinners against child- 
hood. Here in the South practically every plantation 
is guilty of the same wrong. Boys much too young 
are doing heavy plowing and other farm work far 
too severe for their strength ; girls still mere children 
themselves are turned into household drudges. In 



12 INTRODUCTION 

dealing with the problem of child labor, we need 
heart and imagination, or the desired golden 
mean quite escapes us. 

The secondary schools, by emphasizing the value 
of self-help might easily constitute a desirable step- 
ping-stone between the entire irresponsibility of early 
childhood and the proper economic burden of youth. 
The secondary school might be made a fitting vesti- 
bule to the self-supporting industrial college. In ad- 
vocating such institutions Mr. Comings has been an 
unconscious follower of Tolstoy. In our conversa- 
tions I do not remember that we ever touched upon 
Tolstoy; and in the little book before me I do not 
find any use of Tolstoy's favorite phrase, bread-labor. 
But the spirit is the same. It is that all shall labor 
in order that all shall have the sanity which comes 
with wholesome labor, and none shall bear the dead- 
ening burden of overlabor. Mr. Comings' scheme of a 
self-supporting colleges is entirely feasible. It has 
already been realized in part. That it has not been 
more fully and more generally realized is largely the 
fault of the teachers themselves. As Emerson long 
ago said, men are as lazy as they dare to be. And 
teachers are quite as lazy as the rest. Mr. Shaw's biting 
epigram — Those who can, do ; those who can't, teach — 
might well be amended to read : — Those who will, do ; 
those who won't, teach. It is an unfortunate attitude 



INTRODUCTION 13 

for it poisons our social life at its very source, — in 
the schools. The propaganda for the social mind can 
never be very effective when preached to adults 
whose sedentary habits are already formed. It must 
be preached by deed as well as by word to the young 
and plastic, whose habits are now in the making. 
The moral effect, that is to say, the social effect of a 
self-supporting college would be extraordinary. We 
may well advocate it, with Mr. Comings, on the triple 
grounds that only by making our colleges self-sup- 
porting can we make college education universal ; that 
only by spending endowments on productive indus- 
trial plants can we support our colleges without ex- 
ploiting the labor power of unwilling non-collegians, 
and finally that only by mixing prodtictHve labor 
with constructive thought can we truly educate this 
or any other generation of young people. These are 
telling arguments. But overshadowing them and 
including them, as the whole includes the parts, is the 
major argument of all that it is only in our schools 
and colleges that we can hope to inculcate the right 
attitude towards labor and thought, can show their 
unescapable interdependence and can so lend a hand 
in the inauguration of the Social State. 

The events of the past year have depressed no class 
of persons so profoundly and bitterly as our teachers 
and preachers. That the most highly educated na- 
tion in Europe should plunge the world into a 



14 INTRODUCTION 

hideous, unnecessary war marked by unprecedented 
brutality and suffering, calls in question all the praise 
which we have been accustomed to lavish upon edu- 
cation. The very science which we have extolled has 
become the agent of a fiendish inhumanity. Personally 
I was gravely tempted to give over teaching. It did 
not seem worth while to educate boys if when you 
got through they were capable of such profound infi- 
delity to the human spirit. But now I begin to feel 
the inevitable reaction. These tragic events do not 
discredit education. They only reaffirm with titanic 
emphasis what I have so long known and tried to pro- 
claim, that education is only education, is only the 
unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit, when it 
rests upon the essential foundations of Religion and 
Economics. These are the two things that count, — 
a man's attitude towards life, his religion, and the 
method by which he gains his daily bread, his eco- 
nomics. Industrial education is not a thing to take or 
leave. We have no choice. Nor can it be success- 
fully handled without ample recognition of all its 
social and spiritual implications. Mere knowledge, 
a scientific mastery of matter and force, has been 
shown by this terrible war to be a thing of possible 
evil, the possible enemy of civilization. It becomes 
beneficent only when enlisted in the service of the 
human spirit. Without this devoir, this divine guid- 
ance, it may as easily lead to perdition as to Heaven. 



INTRODUCTION 15 

The quality of a human life depends upon the spirit- 
ual ideals which it embodies. It is the same with edu- 
cation. 

C. HANFORD HENDERSON. 



Introduction to First Edition 

I approve in the strongest terms your proposal to 
add to the American system of education a depart- 
ment of Industrial Schools and I would extend this 
department to the entire system. 

The hand and brain should be educated in close 
companionship and no class of the students should 
be denied the inspiring luxury and benefit of appro- 
priate tool using. 

I have no doubt that a well conducted department 
of Industrial Education would prove more than self- 
supporting, but if otherwise, the needful expense 
should be cheerfully provided as demanded by every 
just consideration. 

The marvelous success of the early public school 
system of the Eastern and Middle states was largely 
due to the fact that the learners' time waslairly well 
divided between the school, the shop, and the farm. 
The concurrent education of the hand does not 
hinder but greatly helps the culture of the brain. 

I believe we are on the eve of great improvements 
in the whole system of education and that one of the 
foremost of these improvements will be free indus- 
trial education. 

Sincerely yours, 

CHAS. C. BONNEY. 



i8 INTRODUCTION 

We extract the above, a most fitting introduction, 
from the last kindly letter received a few months 
before the death of the great souled man, whom we 
dare presume to call one of the most pleasant and most 
profitable friends of a lifetime; a man who had at- 
tained to the highest aristocracy of character while 
retaining the most democratic sympathy and deepest 
interest in all that tended to uplift humanity. A 
former educator himself, he was keenly alive to 
plans for progress along all lines that shall prepare 
the people for a higher social order. 

His last great work was originating, presiding 
over and being the moving spirit of the famed 
World's Congress of Religions in 1893 ^t the great 
Exposition in Chicago, a work that set a new pace 
for the growth of the ideals of human unity, and his 
elaborate history of that wonderful school of prog- 
ress is a gospel of highest interest to the race. 

S. H. C. 



Foreword 

"The man is tho't a knave or fool, 

Or bigot, plotting crime. 
Who for advancement of his race 

Is wiser than his time." 

The old idea of human progress was that only by 
slow and almost imperceptible steps can civilization 
evolve to its highest forms, or the inherent evils of 
human nature be overcome and a highly civilized 
society be developed from the rudeness of barbaric 
ages. Today science has so revolutionized most of 
our early concepts that we find many of the things 
we have known for a long time are not so. 

The science of society and of human progress are 
now well enough known, though only very imper- 
fectly as yet, to warrant us in the statement that the 
evolutionary progress in social growth can be, and 
has been, most tremendously accelerated by well- 
known means. It has been so visibly hastened 
through the influence of the common school system, 
aided by the mechanical and industrial training of 
frontier necessities, that greater progress was made 
in two generations after its adoption than for ten 
centuries before. 

The times demanded the common school. Today 
the times demand another equally important step to 
accelerate the evolution of social progress, to pre- 



20 FOREWORD 

vent decadence and to keep up with mechanical 
progress. The people need a deeper, broader, more 
complete education, made universal. To decree 
today that every child shall go through college, 
an industrial college, and as much further as he may 
choose, is not as radical or difficult a step as was the 
decree of the common school by our fathers, and it 
will accelerate social advance and the development 
of character fully as much as that did and relatively 
will not cost as much effort. 

From the data we now have, there can be no ques- 
tion but the dominant race could be so elevated, so 
freed from tendency to crime and degeneracy, so 
exalted morally, so increased in industrial efficiency, 
so raised in average intelligence, that within a very 
few generations all would be fully equal to the very 
best of the present citizens that could be selected 
while the geniuses and superiors would tower to un- 
heard-of heights of moral and intellectual worth, a 
progress that is now only thought of as the result 
of centuries of slow, continuous growth. 

The unfortunate colored race could under proper 
conditions, which have now been well tested and 
which have led a portion to such striking and 
marked advance in the forty years of freedom, be 
raised to a very fair degree of civilization, with their 
superiors attaining to high positions in social growth 
in a comparatively short period. 

S. H. COMINGS. 



Contents 



Page. 

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL 23 

NATIONAL GROWTH OR DECAY DEPENDENT ON 

PROGRESS IN EDUCATIONAL MATTERS ... 31 

THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN IDEALS 34 

PAGANISM STILL DOMINANT IN OUR CIVILIZATION 37 

FROEBEL'S IDEALS AND PHILOSOPHY ... 39 

FROEBEL'S PLANS FOR SMALL SCHOOLS ... 45 

MATERIALS FOR MECHANICAL STUDY ALL ABOUT . 50 

METHODS FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED .... 50 

THE UNB'ORTUNATE RACES 55 

A TEACHER'S RESPONSIBILITY 57 

TEACHERS BREAK DOWN PREMATURELY ... 59 

EXAMPLES AND PRECEDENTS 60 

GARDEN SCHOOLS 60 

SELF-GOVERNMENT 63 

GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC 63 

PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS 65 

SUBURBAN CITY AND CONCENTRATED COUNTRY 

SCHOOLS 66 

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING 66 

THE ELEVATION OP THE RACES 72 

DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES 77 

CIVILIZATION IN HAYTI AND SAN DOMINGO . . 78 

THE PITIFUL FILIPINO FARCE 81 

THE CONTRAST IN JAMAICA 82 

ANGLO-SAXON RACE PRIDE 83 

THE GREAT OBEBLIN'S EXAMPLE 85 

THE PEOPLE MUST MAKE THE CHANGE ... 86 

TEACHING BY EXAMPLE 86 

PREVENTION OF CRIME 87 

THE SLOW AND UNPRECOCIOUS 89 

ELEVATING LABOR VERSUS DEGRADING DRUDGERY 91 

EQUIPMENT VERSUS ENDOWMENT 94 

THE UNIVERSITY— AN INTELLECTUAL AND INDUS- 
TRIAL CENTER 100 

THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT YET LIVES . . . .101 

CAN COLLEGES BE MADE SELF-SUPPORTING? . . 103 
"MAN MORE PRECIOUS THAN PINE GOLD" . . .112 

THE FIRST SELF-SUPPORTING INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL 113 

DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND SERVICE 117 

SELF-SUPPORT THE BEST EDUCATIONAL METHOD . 121 

HAND TRAINING AIDS MENTAL DEVELOPMENT . . 124 



THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS . 

AN IRRIGATION CITY FOR SURPLUS LABOR 

THE WORLD-WIDE FOLLY .... 

WHAT WASTED LABOR POWER COULD DO 

THE ARMY OF DISCHARGED LABOR . 

THE REMEDY FOR CHILD SLAVERY 

NERVOUS AMERICANS .... 

THE EDUCATOR'S RESPONSIBILITY 

MORE FOR SCHOOLS AND LESS FOR WAR 

PLAUSIBLE BUT PERNICIOUS SENTIMENTS 

ARISTOCRATIC, TYRANNICAL, LITERARY MEN . 

THE DEMOCRATIC FORMULA 

THE ENGLISH "THINKER'S" ENSLAVING FORMULA 
AMERICA'S FORMULA, "WATERED STOCKS" 
CANNIBALISTIC CONCEPTS CONTINUED 
ESSENTIALS OF AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM . 
SUMMARY 



130 
131 
133 
134 
135 
137 
139 
141 
142 
145 
146 
147 
148 
150 
151 
152 
154 



SUPPLEMENT. 

A RETROSPECT AND A FORECAST 157 

ORGANIC EDUCATION 158 

SOCIETIES OF ORGANIC EDUCATION .... 159 

WHAT IS ORGANIC EDUCATION? 161 

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 164 

PROGRESS IN TEN YEARS 167 

RUSKIN COLLEGE 167 

THE PRIMARY PURPOSE 168 

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING 176 

PREVENTION OF IMMORALITY IN OUR HIGH 

SCHOOLS 177 

THE ARMY OF THE UNEMPLOYED 178 

A RACE OF AMERICANS 179 

A CHILD CRY 181 



DAILY PROGRAM OF THE SCHOOL OF ORGANIC 
EDUCATION, FAIRHOPE, ALABAMA. 



KINDERGARTEN 183 

FIRST LIFE CLASS 183 

SECOND LIFE CLASS 186 

THIRD LIFE CLASS 187 

THE HIGH SCHOOL 188 

DOMESTIC SCIENCE 189 

MANUAL TRAINING 190 

THE TEACHERS' TRAINING CLASS 190 



Industrial and Vocational 
Education 

(Pagan vs. Christian Civilizations) 

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL. 

"The glory of thinking is in zvork, and the dignity of 
work is in thinking." — Ferguson. 

No proposition will meet with more general ap- 
proval than that our whole educational system needs 
a radical reform or total revolution. 

Herbert Spencer wrote his noted essay on "Educa- 
tion" mainly for the purpose of giving the English 
system a scathing condemnation. Our system has been 
copied from the English with but trifling, if any, im- 
provement. 

Spencer declares that in accord with biological sci- 
ence each individual should be educated and developed 
along the same lines that the race has been developed, 
and we know in the evolution of the race that the 
hands have always been trained before the head. 

The prophet Froebel, who saw more perfectly than 
any other the whole philosophy of mental develop- 
ment, would begin with the hands in the Kindergarten, 
and continue this hand training through the entire 
course of study, teaching the hands the use of tools, 
and the head mechanic arts in advance of literary 
training. We have only touched the first step in his 



24 INDUSTRIAL AND 

scientific plan in adopting the kindergarten, totally 
neglecting the last and best of his full ideal. 

The pagan ideal was to despise labor : the Christian 
civilization professes to exalt creative labor; but so 
tainted are our social standards that we only partially 
accept this ideal and our schools, from the highest to 
the lowest, tend, as Spencer said of the English sys- 
tem, away from labor, and to produce the mental con- 
cept of a labor caste, as immoral as it is unscientific. 

It is a radical charge for present-day educators to 
admit that their own education was wrong in method 
and defective in extent, and that their present work is 
really a failure and unworthy this scientific age, no 
matter how successful they may be in getting pupils 
to recite lessons from text books. Yet there can be 
no question of the justice of this charge, and from 
many of our most progressive educators and thinkers 
come sweeping denunciations of the present system, 
but with no accord as to the remedy. It can be found 
only in a system of Industrial Schools, giving to every 
child in the nation a complete training. 

Memory cramming and hand-neglecting has had its 
day; the teachers who have neither skill nor tact in 
handicraft, nor knowledge of mechanics, will be pushed 
aside by those who have developed a power and a 
pride in what they can do with their hands, as well as 
in purely mental achievements. 

An eminent educator has recently declared that the 



' VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 25 

training of the hands appears to have an almost mira- 
culous power to bring out mental activity, develop 
character, and elevate the morals. Another admits 
that our universal education in the common schools 
has proven a partial failure, has not been the success 
expected (what wonder, when such paganish methods 
have been followed). Yet its inception was a won- 
derful upward step, it set a new pace for the world's 
progress and needs only to be developed still further 
to be all and more than the most sanguine now expect. 

Another educator, equally prominent, declares that 
our whole school system "is top-heavy and imprac- 
tical, not based upon proper foundations, and will soon 
topple over from its own weight." A woman promi- 
nent in the literary world declares that our common 
school system should be called "the modern method 
for the slaughter of the innocents;" that it is a harm- 
ful, nerve-straining method, and does not prepare for 
active life as it should. 

When this severe arraignment of our educational 
system was first published in a popular magazine, 
there was a very wide expression of indignant denial 
of its justice or truth, by a large class of the teachers, 
who declared there was little, or no ground for the 
accusation that many, very many, children were seri- 
ously harmed by the "forcing process," and the long 
confinement at memorizing study. 

In one school with which we were familiar, this 



26 INDUSTRIAL AND 

denial was particularly vigorous ; yet in that very 
school were some of the saddest cases of entire nerve 
breakdown, some even among the colored children in 
the effort to "pass" to the high school. 

Yet so very conservative are most of the teachers, 
so sure are they that the present system is all it need 
be, so averse to any change or innovation, that no 
words of appreciation were given, no effort to im- 
prove was made in response to the warning from this 
eminent writer, who told only the unvarnished truth 
of a method that must be changed, while this effort to 
bring in a better condition should enlist the co-opera- 
tion of all educators. 

The editors of the magazine, in which the article 
was published, reported they had so many letters from 
parents and friends of the injured children from all 
sections of the countr}'- that it fully vindicated the 
indignant writer who only voiced the cry of suffering 
childhood. 

We are sure our suggestions for change in educa- 
tional methods will not meet the approval of all 
teachers, but so widely and enthusiastically have the 
propositions of this little volume been endorsed by 
many eminent educators and able friends of education 
that we can with a fair degree of equanimity bear the 
gibes of the conservatives. 

"Pupils have to unlearn in life ivhat they learn in 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 27 

school. They should he trained toward the activities 
of life, not away from them." — Wendell Phillips. 

There need be no argument over the necessity, the 
practical value and the moral uplift, of general hand 
training in our schools ; the present trend is all in 
that direction. The rapid introduction of weaving, 
basket work, paper construction, raffia work, etc., in 
all the most progressive schools, is a marked advance 
over the average system for primary instruction, and 
is along the lines laid down by Froebel, whose in- 
spired mind best understood the whole philosophy of 
the mental and moral development of children. 

But in our colleges, seminaries and universities, 
where purest science should have its best expression, 
we find instead the most persistent adhesion to the 
old and oft proven unscientific methods of memory 
cramming, with total neglect of hand training, and also 
the taint of a mental labor caste. All this too is in 
complete antagonism to the suggestions of Spencer 
that a more scientific and practical education not only 
better fits for complete living, but for higher attain- 
ments and enjoyment of all that is ethical and esthetic 
in life. 

To prepare for the higher civilization that is surely 
coming, one of the first and most important steps is 
to prepare a superior average order of people by the 
adoption of a universal system of free industrial edu~ 



28 INDUSTRIAL AND 

cation which shall be obligatory upon all and which 
will develop handicraft training as of first importance, 
not because it is of greater material benefit, but bC' 
cause it leads to higher moral and spiritual attain- 
ment and is along the natural line of man's growth in 
mental power. A noted manual training expert de- 
clares, "It produces a new and superior order of 
people," which is the highest conceivable aim. 

Labor, being "a portion of God's ozun creative at- 
tribute beneficently bestowed upon man," must be cul- 
tivated as one of His highest gifts, and only by so 
doing can man be raised to his best estate. 

The remark is often made that our social progress 
does not keep pace with our mechanical progress. The 
schools should set the pace and prepare the way for all 
upward growth. And there is no reason why social re- 
form should not lead and surpass all mechanical 
achievements. When all the people are exalted to a 
higher average of mental power, as they so easily can 
be, the geniuses of such an age will tower to un- 
dreamed-of heights. 

Froebel thought his philosophy so far in advance of 
his time that it would require a couple of centuries for 
the world to come to see the value of it; but, owing 
to the world-wide adoption of the common school and 
through this the more universal intelligence of the 
people, we have in a few decades come to see and 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 29 

accept his teachings; and now we need only to in- 
troduce the best methods for bringing to pass what 
he saw was so important, viz. : to train hands, head 
and heart at the same time. 

In the low estimate of human life and the willing- 
ness to sacrifice it for selfish aims do we see the most 
radical persistence of paganism ; and the willingness 
of modern society to keep a large portion of our work- 
ers in ignorance and degradation, like our coal min- 
ers, factory slaves and slum dwellers, is a sure sign 
of the survival of pagan cruelty. 

The Christ came to "set prisoners free," to "break 
the chains of those who are bound." What prisoners 
need His freeing hand and chain-breaking love as do 
the prisoners of ignorance, ignorant of their own 
native powers? 

Until every child is set free to use with skill his 
creative power of hand and head, it has not had the 
benefit of any properly called Christian civilization. 

The most important work for any nation is the 
education of its own citizens. If this truth could once 
permeate our civilization; if we could believe that 
people are worth more than things; if we could get 
away from the accursed paganism of treating men and 
women, boys and girls, as mere tools with which to 
make money, or as servants for the few ; if we could 



30 INDUSTRIAL AND 

see the hideous wrong and sin of war, and see that, 
instead of lavishing milhons on warships, gathng guns 
and riot arms it would be infinitely better to spend it 
on education; if we could see that to develop a higher 
average of citizenship is the highest ambition for a 
nation, then might we in truth conquer and lead the 
world to the highest ideal of democracy. 

"Americanism shall permeate the ivorld." 

— Stead. 

"To be a true American, is to be a citiaen of the 
World!" 

— Ferguson. 

THE GOSPEL OF LABOR. 

"This is the Gospel of Labor- 
Ring it ye bells of the kirk! 

The Lord of love 

Came doivn from above, 
To live with those who ivork. 

This is the rose He planted. 
Here in the thorn-cursed soil. 

Heaven shall be blest 

With perfect rest, 
But the best of earth is toil." 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 31 

NATIONAL GROWTH OR DECAY DEPENDENT ON PROGRESS 
IN EDUCATIONAL MATTERS. 

"My Father worketh hitherto, and I zvork." 

— The Christ. 

Pagan civilizations have been neither scientific nor 
democratic, but have instead been either transient or 
non-progressive. 

A true Christian civiHzation would be thoroughly 
scientific and democratic, progressive and pennanent. 

The Anglo-Saxon civilization, professing to be 
Christian, is really so tainted with paganism that it 
cannot be permanent unless this taint is removed. 

Along no other line is the contrast more sharply de- 
fined between the unscientific nature of the old pagan 
civilizations and the practical nature of a real Christ- 
ian civilization than in the differing concepts in re- 
gard to the dignity and honor of skilled creative labor 
and the merit of personal service. 

To the old-time pagan the honor and nobility of 
skill in labor that should serve his kind was an abso- 
lutely unthinkable proposition: he could not conceive 
it. Whether he belonged to the Greek or Roman cult 
or to the less cultured nations, his idea of honor and 
employment was war, to kill and destroy; all needful 
labor and personal service must be performed by a 
slave, a human beast of burden. 



3^ INDUSTRIAL AND 

This through long ages has been the only concept 
and it has led to the neglect and degradation of the 
toilers, the real wealth producers and creators, and to 
the inevitable decay of national life and civilization. 

In the Greek Republic, though they had high ideals 
of liberty for the favored classes and the state cared 
for their education and training, they looked with 
contempt on labor, and the inevitable blight of luxuri- 
ous profligacy came to hands untaught in useful serv- 
ice. The saving science of the union of skill in handi- 
craft and in mental culture was neglected; and sure 
decay came to the Republic, in spite of its intellectual 
development, as it had come to all previous civiliza- 
tions, and will come to all, to the end of time, who 
neglect this science. There can be no exceptions to 
this unvarying rule. It is an inherent principle of 
human life. 

The Christ, the teacher of a divine social order, 
came as a toiler, a creator of homes among an indus- 
trious people. In Him were concentrated and exem- 
plified all the democratic ideals of all the poets, pro- 
phets and sages from Moses' time down. He taught 
the essentials of a scientific social order; He chose 
His teachers and preachers of the new social ideal 
from the laboring classes. 

He gave the keynote to his ideal in one 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 33 

terse sentence, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work." 

At the tragic climax of His pathetic career, by a 
sacrament of ineffable tenderness He taught His fol- 
lowers for all time that in loving, useful, personal 
service to their kind there is no such thing as a menial 
ministry; but that the noblest and greatest, the high- 
est and most honored, the really most aristocratic and 
exalted, are they who can serve most and best. A 
most difficult lesson for humanity to accept then and 
now, but a fact of most momentous importance in 
the science of social or national permanence. 

In His immortal parable of the "Good Samaritan" 
He showed beyond the possibility of cavil that the 
hand of him who serves in time of need is the hand 
of a brother indeed, worthy of all honor and love; 
that to neglect those who need our ministry or who 
do our work is a violation of the ethical laws of life, 
and that much-neglected lesson that we are our broth- 
er's keeper was renewed. According to the "Christ 
Ideal," we have in the modern industrial world a 
"Jericho Road" of economic wrong that forces boys 
and girls to bread-winning before they have had proper 
or adequate training to develop their mental, moral, 
or physical powers ; and along this road are thousands 
lying robbed, wounded and helpless, waiting the 
ministry of the coming "Good Samaritan" who will 
perforce give them the needed mental and handicraft 



34 INDUSTRIAL AND 

training to make them citizens worthy of the coming 
age. 

The transforming power of this lofty ideal of the 
honor of service among the immediate followers of 
the Christ's new social order was strikingly exempli- 
fied in the remarkable change in St. Paul from the 
haughty, idle and supercilious Pharisee to the indus- 
trious tent-maker and preacher of the new social ideal 
of universal brotherhood, working with his hands for 
needful support, that he might be independent of all 
men while preaching so radical a social change. It 
was a most impressive lesson for all people and for 
all times. It was the highest and most scientific up- 
lift of human ideals. It was the beginning of the 
end of the old false pagan ideal in regard to the 
servility or dishonor of labor and personal service. 

THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN IDEALS. 

Yet today, with all our supposed advance in science 
and our regard for Christian ideals, we may well be 
startled by the persistence and dominance of pagan 
social ideals in so many forms ; and our labor con- 
cepts are among the worst. With the persistence of 
chattel slavery until a very recent date, among all 
so-called "Christian nations" has persisted the base 
and pernicious idea of the lowly nature of personal 
service and creative labor, and the equally pernicious 
and purely pagan idea that there is honor or "style" 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 35 

in useless idleness, instead of actual disgrace and 
danger and ever increasing unhappiness, which is the 
scientific and unchanging fact, as true in the mansion 
as in the cabin. 

It is well-nigh impossible to appreciate at once the 
infinite gulf that separates the false pagan ideal in 
regard to labor from the lofty and scientific Christian 
ideal, as so impressively interpreted by that great seer 
of education, the immortal Froebel, whose name shall 
stand in future ages beside those of Isaiah and St. 
Paul among the illumined souls inspired to point the 
upward path of humanity. "Labor," he tersely de- 
clared "is a portion of God's creative attribute bene- 
ficently bestowed upon man." 

If this profound and revolutionary philosophy is 
essentially correct, as we deem it to be, then how 
fundamentally important it is that this divine attribute 
be cultivated and developed to its utmost extent, how 
sacreligious not to do so, how wicked to neglect the 
Godlike gift, and how vastly different this ideal on 
which to build a civilization from the pagan concept 
of the disgrace of labor; and how little wonder that 
pagan civilizations went down or failed to become 
progressive and democratic when demoralized by such 
an unscientific ideal. All history of all nations, ages 
and individuals proves that in the moral virtues of 
patriotism and altruism the immortals whose examples 
and teachings have helped the race upward and for- 



36 INDUSTRIAL AND 

ward have been those whose hands have been trained 
in creative labor and useful service ; while everywhere 
and at all times, from Solomon's time down, the vices 
and follies and profligacies that have destroyed in- 
dividuals and nations have come almost wholly from 
the idle and those whose hands have not been trained 
to labor. 

Will any candid mind dare deny that we have estab- 
lished the pagan ideal of a labor caste in our social 
standards, or that in our institutions of higher educa- 
tion the tendency is away from labor and towards the 
pagan concept of a disgrace in labor, and that, as a 
natural consequence, most of our teachers, preachers 
and missionaries go forth still farther to spread this 
baneful idea, this disintegrating heresy, this immoral, 
because unscientific, standard? No doubt this false 
concept has also been strengthened by the theological 
dogma that all labor is a curse, instead of an exalt- 
ing. Godlike attribute ; it has been most tremendously 
exaggerated of late by the false, shoddy ideals of a 
spurious aristocracy of money without culture; and 
one of the most serious problems of our civilization 
is how to remove this root of the upas tree of pagan 
folly and re-establish the true concept as the basis of 
our civilization. It is not a light task, but one that 
will tax to the uttermost the formative forces of a 
new educational system. 

We believe it can only be done by beginning a new 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION . 37 

system in a new type of colleges and universities, 
working on a new basis, and with essentially new 
ideas. The older ones are too conservative, too set 
in conventional methods. It is too hard for educa- 
tors to admit that their own education was incom- 
plete in quantity or imperfect in method, or that their 
present methods can be radically improved upon. It 
is a common belief that of all conservatives the aver- 
age educator is most conservative ; so, like all re- 
forms, what we dare plead for must come from a 
demand of practical people, aided as it will be by many 
of the progressive teachers and prominent educators 
who have seen the wrong of the present system, even 
as the great philosopher Spencer saw it so long ago. 

"All great reforms must come up from the common 
people." — Ancient Egyptian Proverb. 

PAGANISM STILL DOMINANT IN OUR CIVILIZATION. 

"More has been given to us than to any people here- 
tofore, and therefore more is required of us. Civili- 
sation as it progresses requires a higher conscience, a 
wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Failing these, civili- 
zation must pass into destruction." — Henry George. 

To many it will seem a startling and unwelcome 
thought that our civilization is still largely tainted with 
pagan concepts and standards ; but remember it was 
the profound philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who made 



38 INDUSTRIAL AND 

this indictment against the English system of educa- 
tion, and ours has been an essential copy of theirs, 
and if pagan ideals have been found in such high 
places as colleges and universities, how sure may we 
be to find them permeating all our civilization, as we 
do when we carefully analyze the lack of scientific 
basis for so many long-established social customs. 

For example, we have continued chattel slavery 
in most so-called Christian nations until a most recent 
date, a purely pagan custom. Our child wage slavery 
is but a slight modification of the same. War, too, and 
all its accompaniments, is purely pagan and barbaric 
in the extreme, utterly out of place in an age of sci- 
entific democracy. Ernest Crosby shows quite con- 
clusively that the silly, childish vanity of the savage 
manifested by his love of war paint and feathers finds 
its persistent duplicate in the present-day arrogance 
of the soldier when ornamented with brass buttons, 
shoulder straps and the unspeakably silly pomp of 
military regalia; and he shows that the Peace Society 
or the great Czar need only do away with this relic 
of pagan folly to stop at once all wars, that our hate- 
ful army and navy would vanish like morning dew, 
if simply deprived of their showy dress, the remains 
of the weakest, silliest expression of a childish savage. 

We find this strange, persistent love of gewgaws, 
war paint and feathers so adhering to all forms of 
military service that not even a Sunday school "Boy's 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 39 

Brigade" nor the military drill for exercise in our 
schools can be had without the brass buttons, shoulder 
straps and striking dress. 

Let us carry the Crosby philosophy one step further 
and decree that those who study the art of human 
butchery shall wear the uniform of the butchers in 
our slaughter houses and abattoirs, the blue denim 
overalls and blouse, and we may be sure our paganish 
army and navy would not hold together a month. 

In the use of jewelry and glaring dress and oft- 
changing fashion we see again the strange persistence 
of paganism. In medicine and religion we dare not 
enumerate the evidences of pagan hoodoo and dog- 
matic superstition. We fear it taints these streams 
also and needs the light and help of a more scientific 
system of education whose chief corner-stone shall be 
creative skilled labor. 

froebel's ideals and philosophy. 

"Man must be doing something, for in him throbs 
the creative impulse." — Henry George. 

"No high degree of morals can be established or 
maintained without manual labor." — Froebel. 

It seems unaccountable that such deference has 
been paid to the great educator, Froebel, and yet so 
little known of the breadth of his philosophy of a 
complete educational system, of which the kindergar^ 



40 INDUSTRIAL AND 

ten, beneficent as it is, is only the A, B, C. In his 
ideal the carrying forward of a system of handicraft 
training through all the subsequent processes of edu- 
cation was fully as essential as was the kindergarten 
for the first step. He looked upon man as essentially 
a creator, and the development of his creative facul- 
ties as a necessary part of his education. He declared 
that it was of but little use to develop the receptive 
powers of the brain, without at the same time, and as 
a necessary reflex action, developing the active and 
formative powers of the mind. 

He made skilled labor a part of morality and reli- 
gion, the culture of the creative attribute a portion 
of spiritual growth. He would look with horror at 
attempts at race elevation by storing the memory 
with facts and literary concepts, while neglecting to 
develop the creative powers of brain and skill of 
hand. He would follow the pathway of all race 
progress with each individual of every race: first 
cultivating the hand to do; then the brain to remem- 
ber how and why. 

To express one's self and to develop one's self by 
creative skill of the hands was with him a foundation 
principle; and we shall never develop the able, all- 
round faculties of our citizenship until we absorb 
and imitate his profound philosophy. 

The able educator, Hughes, justly declares that 
English and American educators have gone as far 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 41 

as possible from his theory, and are slowly and pain- 
fully coming to see the wisdom and necessity of 
more closely following his plans. The results have 
been pitiful enough with the white race, but most 
disastrous with the unfortunate races; and harm 
instead of good has been done to thousands of vic- 
tims of ill-directed philanthropy by a false method 
of education. 

In his able analysis of Froebel's Laws of Educa- 
tion he devotes a long and most interesting chapter 
to the value of play as an educational force, full of 
most practical suggestion. And we deem it but a 
portion of the philosophy of handicraft training in 
developing the all-round character and ability for 
complete living. It is a portion of Froebel's teach- 
ing that as yet has not had one tenth the attention 
it deserves. And we are sure that differing types of 
play are but the preparation for differing social 
ideals. 

There are plays that represent the co-operative 
and emulative ideal as well as those that belong to 
competitive and destructive ideals of social life. In 
the emulative play, success is gained by skill, activity 
and alertness, which does not tend at all to harm 
those who do not win; while in the competitive play, 
as in business, it is the idea to down the opponent, 
with cruel force if need be, to risk life and limb to 
wrest from him the prize at any cost; which sug- 



42 INDUSTRIAL AND 

gests the wide difference in morals between compe- 
tition and emulation. 

In industrial training, up to a certain point, are 
found many of the benefits Froebel saw in properly 
directed play. It is only a question of how much of 
each is best. In manual training schools it has been 
found that pupils will often voluntarily leave play 
for practice in the workroom. 

The recent establishment of an organized system- 
atic public playground in the city of Syracuse is but 
one of the steps in the development of this great 
ideal of progress. Children should be guided and 
directed in this as in school or work. 

If we would only come to see that the production 
and development of superior citizens is the grandest 
aim of civilization, how these different problems 
would be worked out, even as were the improvement 
of the engine, press and auto, each having the in- 
tensest study of the ablest mechanical minds. We 
need a touch of Isaiah's prophetic conception of the 
time when "A man shall be more precious than iine 
gold." 

Froebel's great advance over the methods of 
Pestalozzi was in the discovery that the receptivity 
of the brain of a child must be followed or accom- 
panied by a corresponding activity of the hand. 
When a new idea is presented, it must do something 
with its hands or create something to correspond 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 43 

with the concept of the mind, to get its full or ap- 
proximate value. It was a fundamental discovery 
and has a most tremendous practical bearing on 
race elevation as well as on individual training. 

Pestalozzi would teach ''object lessons" by having 
the teacher bring the "object" in her hand, or, per- 
chance, allow the pupils to take it or touch it; while 
Froebel would have them "do somethincf' or "make 
something" with or from the object. 

He would not teach even geography by the use 
of the eye alone, but would take objects like an 
orange, a banana, a piece of ivory, tea or coffee, and 
go with the class on imaginary voyages to the coun- 
tries where these things are obtained, pointing out 
the various routes on the map with all possible in- 
structive detail to arouse an interest in the minds of 
the class through the pleasure and excitement of the 
trip. 

He would not teach botany until the child had 
planted and grown flowers and learned some lessons 
of their life and development; then he would connect 
the abstract science with the already aroused interest 
in plant life. 

He distinctly taught that those who train one part 
only of man's nature to the neglect of the others are 
producing abnormal beings out of harmony with 
God's laws. What a reflection on present-day school 
methods! 



44 INDUSTRIAL AND 

Froebel seems to have been the first to discover 
that not to develop handicraft is actually to weaken 
and decrease mental power, a most suggestive 
thought for those who speak of "wasting time from 
study to work with the hands" or who feel that time 
in school used in hand training is wasted. He saw, 
too, the high moral value of teaching the young the 
ideals of the true interdependence of "each to all, and 
all to each," rather than the intensity of selfish in- 
dividualism. Whatever strengthened the bond of 
human unity he saw was divine and religious in its 
influence on character, and the wickedness of all 
caste divisions of society he clearly appreciated. 

He seemed to grasp the practical value of the 
Christ philosophy of the brotherhood of men, their 
perfect unity with each other and with their Creator, 
and in carrying this concept into effect in all one's 
hfe is the hope of the elevation of the race; and in 
no other way can this ideal be so perfectly developed 
as in schools where all work together for a common 
end. 

He was a seer of collectivism; he saw clearly and 
perfectly how the highest possible development of 
the individual is perfectly compatible with the 
closest mutualism of co-operation. He was one of 
the early prophets of the coming co-operative age, 
and showed the way by which it can be brought 
about, the possible preparation for a millennial epoch, 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 45 

through the more complete education of the produc- 
ing classes and by ennobling labor for all. He 
clearly saw the immorality of the selfish spirit of 
competition as distinguished from the nobler one of 
emulation. 

These sentiments were more recently affirmed by 
the late Colonel Parker, of the Chicago Normal 
School, who publicly declared that *'the greatest 
work to be accomplished by the common school sys- 
tem is the cultivation of a spirit of mutualism, altru- 
ism and democracy among the people; failing this," 
he emphatically declared, "the schools fail of their 
highest mission." In no other way can they so per- 
fectly perform this work as when the teachers and 
pupils work together a portion of the time for the 
common good, while teaching and learning the in- 
valuable lessons of mechanics and of productive labor 
that shall provide for their mutual needs. 

'^Civilization is Co-operation!" — Henry George. 

froebel's plans for small schools. 

The essentials of Froebel's plans for the smaller 
schools, where the teacher has no experience and 
neither apparatus nor text books on handicraft train- 
ing, may be safely introduced in the primary grade, 
whether the pupils have had kindergarten training 
or not, by cutting famiHar objects from paper; then 
folding papers into envelope forms, triangles, 



46 INDUSTRIAL AND 

squares, etc., etc.; then, with heavier paper, making 
boxes, cornucopias and all possible things by folding 
and creasing, all the time cultivating exactness in 
corners and edges, and general neatness of work and 
closeness in following copy. 

A few hours of this each week will delight the 
children, and the work will take the place at home 
of noisy, purposeless plays and will vastly help in 
gaining the perfect control of hands and the culture 
of the eye so useful in all life's activities. From 
this the steps will be gradual along the varied forms 
of basket making, weaving in colors, braiding with 
three, four or six strands of strings, braiding corn 
husk mats, sewing from the simplest basting stitch 
to the most difficult blind darning and elaborate 
embroidery. By the time the sixth grade is reached, 
the simpler forms of Sloyd may be taken up, the 
drawing of simple forms on wood, then whittling 
to the drawing, in all cases the work finished with 
sandpaper to have the completed product look 
smooth and neat. 

The jackknife can be made an implement of 
art culture, equal to the pencil or brush, if only 
directed into making things of symmetry instead 
of the usual inane whittling merely to make shav- 
ings. The use of scissors in cutting silhouettes, 
birds, profiles, dolls, etc., is of equal value. As the 
work goes forward and skill and interest' deepens 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 47 

it will sharpen the ability to memorize lessons from 
books and greatly help in maintaining discipline and 
interest. 

The children from the kindergarten up should 
be taught to plant seeds and care for plants, flow- 
ers, shrubs and vines, and the taste thus started 
for the future study of botany, a sure beginning for 
future home decoration with flowers and beautiful 
living things. 

From the seventh grade the more difficult steps 
in Sloyd should be introduced : first, drawing more 
useful things on wood, paper cutters, cake spoons, 
potato mashers, measuring rules, hammers or axe 
handles, then whittling or planing or shaving them 
to the forms drawn, all the time striving to im- 
prove the technique of form and finish. Clay mod- 
eling, water color painting, with more or less of 
free-hand drawing or sketching from nature, ac' 
cording to the taste or ability of the pupils, may be 
introduced. 

In the same simple but efifective manner may 
"nature studies" be made most useful and intensely 
interesting, and become a preparation for later 
studies in biology or zoology. If there are no text 
books in the school, or the teacher has had no train- 
ing, begin with the study of domestic animals, their 
habits, their varying instincts and intelligence ; then 
study the wild birds and animals, learning as much 



48 INDUSTRIAL AND 

as possible of their peculiar modes of living, their 
cunning and means of defense; then the honey bees 
and insects, getting the pupils to learn from inquiry 
or study of their structure, their ways of life and 
means of defense, what species are related, their 
transformation from the egg and worm to the per- 
fect insect on wings, and of any that do not pass 
through the chrysalis state, etc., etc. It will sur- 
prise the teacher who has never tried it to see how 
much of most interesting lore can be gathered and 
combined by the efforts of a small school, of what 
intense interest it will be, and how it will add to 
the value and depth of the text-book study thus to 
broaden the field of investigation, and how much it 
will help to create the love of observation which is 
one of the highest aims of all school work. 

Let no teacher fear to begin this work because 
of lack of training or of text books. In no way may 
a teacher come into more complete sympathy with 
pupils than to experiment and learn with them to 
do the things that are out of the conventional rut of 
school work. To ask them for help and suggestions 
will be to them a favor unspeakable, and there is no 
better way to draw out their best thought or inge- 
nuity and thus double the value of the lessons 
learned. Often, too, it will be well to ask for an- 
swers to or explanations of problems that will re- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 49 

quire time and study to solve, and thus encourage 
that reflection which is the highest form of study. 

In all this work outside of text-books let there be 
no suspicion that the time is at all wasted or 
misused; instead it is likely to be the most valuable 
and profitable of any in the whole school work; it 
will rest, refresh and renew the interest in regular 
study; will draw out observation, comparison and 
analysis ; will strengthen logic, or the power to rea- 
son from cause to effect ; will develop the control of 
the hand and eye, the taste for observing things 
and the best method of effort and execution. 

One of the best results will be the improved 
moral tone and discipline of the school room, for 
which nothing is worse than the dull, uninterested 
effort to memorize simply because one must; and 
to be fairly decorous from fear only does not de- 
velop nobility of character as when one's conduct 
is exemplary from the pride in doing well, and an 
interest in the work of the school, all of which 
these methods will inspire. The pupil who reluc- 
tantly and perforce memorizes dry facts and ab- 
stract statements of principles is touched on a low 
moral plane, if not absolutely injured morally; 
while if the active, intense interest and joy of learn- 
ing things for their own sake is aroused and sus- 
tained, the moral tone of the pupil is exalted and 
his higher character developed. 



50 INDUSTRIAL AND 

MATERIALS FOR MECHANICAL STUDY ALL ABOUT. 

In every school room are materials for study of 
mechanics and the achievements of skilled labor; 
the very seats and desks are most prolific texts for 
interesting talks on the mechanics of their con- 
struction, the pitch of backs and seats, the hinge 
and action of the seat, the beautifully joined strips 
of wood and the methods of union of wood and 
metal, and above all, the history of the evolution of 
the school seat, from the old-time slab, set on rude 
legs put in auger holes, with no table in front to 
rest the books upon, to the present scientific per- 
fect school seat, worthy of extreme admiration as a 
work of real art. 

So can the teacher develop a wealth of material 
for study in all things about the school and homes 
of the pupils, the farm wagon and the buggy, the 
wheelbarrow and the bicycle, the sewing machine 
and the reaper or seed planter, all will afford les- 
sons of most fascinating interest to both pupils 
and teachers who are looking for progress in the 
art of teaching. 

METHODS FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED. 

"Education is leading human souls to what is best, 
and getting zvhat is best out of them. 

Wholesome human employment is the first and best 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 51 

method in all education, mental as well as physical." 

— John Ruskin. , 

We find that the unfortunate child of feeble 
mind, or no apparent mind at all, who cannot pos- 
sibly mentally grasp the abstract idea of the dififer- 
ence between one and two, can be led along by first 
taking one apple in his hand, tasting its goodness to 
arouse an interest, then, taking two apples in his 
hands, tasting of each to see that both are good ; and 
slowly but surely there comes to the dull mind the 
difference between only one apple in one hand or an 
apple in each hand; gradually the weak mentality 
comes to know two and, finally, three apples in his 
hands, when he could not possibly do so by seeing 
them with his eyes. After the awakened mind has 
learned by the touch of the hands of the one apple 
and of two, three or more apples, he is given a knife 
to handle; he is pricked with its sharp point and 
slightly cut with its keen edge ; he learns to respect 
and fear these qualities. Then he learns to cut his 
apple and he has gained a power to do. A pencil 
mark is made on a thin piece of wood and he is 
helped to follow the pencil mark with his knife. He 
is delighted with the, to him, great feat. So slowly 
but surely, he is led along in the development of 
creative power till, perchance, he can make a rude but 
fairly correct foot rule and mark with a pencil the 



52 INDUSTRIAL AND 

inches on it in imitation of one taken as a sample 
to work from. This is an achievement to him quite 
equal to Watt's first successful movement of a pis- 
ton in the cylinder by the power of steam. He en- 
joys doing and making and a new interest is 
aroused. 

Slowly and gradually the growing power is fost- 
ered till he is shown a box with his apples in it 
but no cover to enclose them. The box is just as 
long as his rude rule, cut out with such labor and 
joy. He is shown a saw, and his fingers feel the 
sharp teeth. He is taught to saw ofif a piece of the 
board and after a few trials his foot rule is laid 
upon the board and he is helped to saw off a piece 
just long enough to cover his box and hide the 
apples. It is lifted and replaced, till he sees the dif- 
ference between them covered and uncovered. 
Some nails are shown and felt and a hammer is 
put in his hands and he is allowed to pound. After 
a little he is helped to drive the nails and his box is 
closed. He cannot now touch or take his prized 
apples, a new and startling conception. He is en- 
couraged to draw the nails, but made to do it him- 
self and then allowed to take the uncovered apples 
in his hands and again cover and nail the lid down. 
Then the cover is fastened on with screws, all done 
by his own hands. Then a longer box is brought 
and the cover already cut is shown to be too short; 



' VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 53 

the box measured and found to be twice the length 
of the rule, and the rule used, all the time in his 
own hands, to mark off a cover two rule lengths. 
It is sawed ofif and found to cover the box and en- 
close his apples. Then a knife and sandpaper are 
used to smooth the rough board so it will feel dif- 
ferent to the touch of the hand. So, on and on, the 
hand leading to the concept of the mind in Nature's 
own way, till the seemingly vacant mind is edu- 
cated to greater and greater activity, and the power 
of doing things leads on to usefulness of greater or 
less degree, till often not only the use of simple 
tools is acquired, but finally the lawn mower and 
the bicycle are mastered, the hoe and spade in the 
garden, or the broom and duster in the house; and 
usefulness and enjoyment take the place of painful 
vacuity. 

Along essentially the same line have we seen the 
stupid, listless colored boy, who had with difficulty 
been taught to lead the mule to water, to tie him se- 
curely in the stall, and as a tremendous achievement 
to harness and hitch him to the cotton cultivator, 
but who could no more take off the nut and washer 
from the plow bolt than he could run an engine or a 
printing press. Later the same boy, as seemingly 
dull in mechanics as the vacant-minded child who 
could not learn "two" was in mathematics, became 
eager to own a second-hand wheel ; under the magic 



54 INDUSTRIAL AND 

power of its touch in his own hands, he gradually came 
to have a glimmering sense of its intricate mechanism 
and the mystery of the monkey wrench and the nut 
and washer on the bolt became plain and simple to the 
draitm-oiU faculty. 

The same boy, engaged to assist the village 
blacksmith, and, feeling a sense of already having 
had a mechanical experience of no mean value with 
his wheel, was soon able to take to pieces the 
broken plow or cultivator and put it together cor- 
rectly when mended; would place the bit in a brace 
and bore a hole through the broken plow beam and 
select and insert the correct sized bolt and draw it 
to place with the wrench ; would do quite intricate 
jobs of taking apart or putting together wagons and 
buggies, and in time became quite an accomplished 
helper in this difficult art of handicraft. In all such 
cases, with this added mental power, gained mainly 
through discipline of the hand, there comes an ele- 
vation of morals ; the lazy, thriftless, "frivolous," 
fellow becomes possessed of pride and self-respect 
and is industrious largely in proportion to the ex- 
tent of his training in handicraft skill, thus in a 
very practical and forceful manner confirming 
Froebel's theory that through creative labor there 
is moral and spiritual uplift; and only with this 
type of education is there any hope of race eleva- 
tion. How few of the conventional teachers real- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 55 

ize that essentially the same principles should 
maintain for the bright and precocious pupil, as for 
the mentally vacant, differing in degree only, but 
following the same steps of progress from hand to 
brain. 

While the bright and precocious child may learn 
from the study of the abstract, it will much sooner 
and better grasp and retain by following Nature's 
plan of the hand first, and then the brain, in ac- 
quiring knowledge and the power to use it. 

THE UNFORTUNATE RACES. 

For the unfortunate races to strive for lit- 
erary culture, while neglecting to develop the crea- 
tive power of their hands, is much more disastrous 
than an attempt to build the school house by rear- 
ing the bell tower and roof before any structure is 
begun below. The wreck of the tower may pos- 
, sibly be saved and properly elevated after the lower 
structure is erected ; but those who think they have 
attained the pinnacle by a college diploma, with no 
discipline of hand, are above and beyond any hope 
of being taught any new lessons. They have been 
taught by that strongest of all teachers, imitation, 
to do as their teachers do, who, according to Froe- 
bel, Herbert Spencer and thousands of others, have 
been educated to pagan ideals, not to the true 



56 INDUSTRIAL AND 

science of correct development, which always trains 
the hands first. 

"No lazv of human nature is more dominant than 
our tendency to imitate those we consider above us." 

In the race problem this is one of the fundamen- 
tals that mvist be reckoned with. We do most 
heartily wish that all the colored theological semi- 
naries of the present system could be wiped out or 
changed to such as the grand old apostle, St. Paul, 
would approve. His methods were first to set up 
his tent maker's shop, and then teach a higher social 
and religious ideal, viz., that in self-reliant, self- re- 
specting, self-supporting labor of skilled hands is 
the first elementary and fundamental lesson in a 
Christian life or civilization. If this type could be- 
come the established order, we should not so often 
hear the merited severe criticism by thoughtful 
Southern people of the colored preachers of the 
South ; and there is no question but that our North- 
ern brethren of the cloth would gain a Pauline 
power along the same line. 

"To work was from the beginning, and is today the 
joy, the pride and the honor of life." 

— Bishop Doane. 

"If any will not work, neither shall he eat." 

— Saint Paul. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 57 

A teacher's responsibility. 

In view of Spencer's indictment of present meth- 
ods of education, we have never been able to un- 
derstand how the progressive, earnest, conscien- 
tious teachers have been willing to go on without pro- 
test, continuing a system so tainted with pagan ideals, 
and how so many are even averse to any effort to- 
wards change or improvement. But we do know 
that in general the educators are the very Conserv- 
atives of Conservatism, and some are so rooted in 
egotism as to be unwilling to admit that any pos- 
sible advance can be made on their own methods, 
and even so blinded as to boast of their adherence 
to the false ideal of looking with contempt on labor. 

We cannot understand how true, earnest, present- 
day teachers can be willing to continue to lead their 
unwilling young students through all the fiound- 
erings, mental gymnastics and mind-dwarfing 
processes of the present courses in our high schools, 
seminaries and colleges, in view of these lessons 
from Spencer and his lucid proof that the scientific 
nature methods would so much better fit for actual 
life, so much better prepare for home and citizen- 
ship, and last, but not least, fit for the highest cul- 
ture and enjoyment in the realms of art and music 
and for the moral and religious development of our 
strangely complex being; or when they consider 



58 INDUSTRIAL AND 

the teachings of Froebel, the modern Socrates, who 
saw so clearly how Nature's way of education is al- 
ways from the concrete to the abstract, from the 
hand to the brain, from action to reason. 

Yet in spite of it all, in spite of the long and loud 
mutterings of discontent with the present system, 
our teachers stand in the way and continue to teach 
as they were taught, instead of being, as they ought 
to be, the radical leaders along the path of mental 
evolution and progress. 

Yet no one has ever dared to oppose Spencer's 
logic, that to cram memory with what will be 
quickly forgotten is not development, and that it is 
practically starvation to deny the mind the quality 
of food it has a longing for and that will give it 
strength along the lines that will be continually 
added to by life's activities, which is the true ideal 
for educational efiforts. His philosophy stands all 
unchallenged and unanswered, though a most 
severe and sweeping denunciation of present meth- 
ods. 

We are sure this wrong method of mental de- 
velopment has had a most unsalutary eiTect on our 
national character and made us as a people so weak 
in logic that we endure with strange apathy and 
stupid submission the many illogical enslavements 
and taxations of a corrupt and foolish political and 
economic system ; and we believe we have never at- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 59 

tained to our proper place as an entirely free and 
progressive people, as we should do under a truer 
educational system. 

TEACHERS BREAK DOWN PREMATURELY. 

"The prosperity of the state depends on ALL the 
people being properly educated." — Gov. Heyward. 

It is a matter of most common remark that the 
teachers' vocation is one of severe nerve strain, and 
that many break down under it at an early age and 
thus lose their best years of usefulness. This alone 
is enough to condemn the system, for of all citizens 
of the state, the teachers should be the most valued, 
and whatever cuts their life or activity short is a 
severe loss to the social organism. The later years 
of a teacher's life should be the most useful and 
would be if conserved by a proper change from men- 
tal to physical labor, in an industrial system of 
school life. 

"The knowledge obtained from hooks is hut the 
tool to develop the true wisdom for life." 

But we are glad to welcome the signs of an awak- 
ened consciousness in all the wide-awake and pro- 
gressive spirits among our educators and, better still, 
among those who are outside the profession but 
earnestly watching its workings and efifects, all alive 
to the benefit of going at once to Nature's own method 



6o INDUSTRIAL AND 

of "feeling after knowledge" then learning of the 
abstract later. The rapidly advancing demand for 
teachers who can teach the hands to do, as well as 
the head to think, proves that the new order is at 
hand. 

"Industrial training of the rural population is one 
of the most important problems before the American 
people." — Ex-Mayor Abram S. Hezvitt. 

EXAMPLES AND PRECEDENTS. 

Some very successful experiments have been made 
where industrial features are given due prominence 
with most gratifying results. 

GARDEN SCHOOLS. 

One of the most practical was established by the 
Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, at the 
suggestion of its able president. 

Nearly one hundred boys were gathered ofif the 
streets and each one given a garden plot of about 
six rods, where he was taught gardening and flori- 
culture by an expert. The boys were given all the 
products of their work, and prizes for attention and 
superior skill. Their work continued only four hours 
per day, two in the morning and two in the after- 
noon, so as not to become monotonous. It has been 
found to be not only a most charming study, that 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 6i 

the boys look forward to with eagerness and enthu- 
siasm, but it has had a most wonderful moral influ- 
ence. The rowdy, hoodlum boys, the so-called 
"toughs" of the street, who were the terror of the 
neighborhood, have become gentlemanly and polite, 
and find their work more attractive than their old 
sports. One striking proof of this change is found 
in the fact that lots in that neighborhood have more 
than trebled in value. The success was beyond the 
promoter's highest anticipations, the boys becoming 
so changed under the charm of being workers with 
God in Nature's magic wonderland of growing 
things. 

These boys from the garden schools have without 
doubt changed the whole tenor of their lives. Their 
homes will have flowers, trees and vines; their leisure 
will probably be spent in a garden rather than in a 
saloon. They have tasted one of the highest joys of 
life at Nature's own fountain. 

Can there be a possible doubt that these factory 
boys will be more likely to be law-abiding, home- 
loving citizens for these hours of teaching and work 
in the first and highest place of man's labor? This 
caring for living, growing things, this communion 
with Nature's most wonderful and charming ways, 
is one of the greatest safeguards for all young people, 
girls as well as boys, and no industrial school will be 
complete without its farm and garden. 



62 INDUSTRIAL AND 

In other garden schools or children's farms one 
half the product of the plat was sold to pay for seed 
and teachers' salaries, and in this way were nearly 
self-supporting. No doubt, in the saving of crime 
alone these schools paid a thosand per cent, on their 
cost, and should be established in every city in the 
nation. 

It may be a question for serious consideration how 
much our Sunday school workers may learn from 
the moralizing influence of these garden schools. It 
is certainly an inspiring fact that village boys and 
girls who have won the name of "toughs" can be 
brought to comparatively good order and the value 
of lots largely increased by the elevating influence 
of garden work. We believe these children could be 
touched by a Sabbath lesson freed from all theo- 
logical dogma, but full of the spirit of reverent love 
for the great All Father, the source of all life and 
law, and some of the simple, tender and direct teach- 
ings of the Carpenter of Galilee on our mutual rela- 
tions and the oneness of man and his Creator. We 
are equally sure that primary lessons in botany and 
the varied sciences connected with soil, seed, cli- 
mate, fertilizers, etc., could be imparted in the gar- 
den school that would be of deepest interest and 
begin that taste for study and for knowing things 
that would make the later study in school a matter 
of delight and interest, instead of the dull burden of 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 63 

abstract study of the conventional school text 
books. 

SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

More than half a century ago J. G. Holland wrote 
out the theory of self-government for pupils in school 
in his charming story of "Arthur Bonnicastle." The 
idea was too great and good to be adopted at once, 
but, Hke all advanced ideas, had to wait a generation 
before its worth was fully appreciated and the needs 
of a more democratic ideal called it into use ; but now 
the world is ripe for it, and we find many schools 
adopting this method of discipline, as well as some 
philanthropic works like the Forward Movement of 
Chicago, which has for several years taken a large 
crowd of young children for a summer outing and 
used this method of maintaining discipline with most 
satisfactory results. 

GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. 

The George Junior Republic was started in this 
way, and has grown into a permanent institution. 
This is exactly what its name indicates, a republic of 
minors who are self-governing, and whose motto is 
"Nothing without Labor." It is made up largely of 
homeless or worse than homeless boys and girls 
from the cities. They have the usual amount of 



64 INDUSTRIAL AND 

school work and must work out of school hours for 
all their needs. They are paid in the coin of the 
Republic for their work, and, as there is no provi- 
sion for those who are lazy, those who do not work 
soon suffer for the necessaries of life and so learn to 
have a wholesome respect for labor as well as for law. 
The results so far have been surprisingly satisfac- 
tory. How much better this than taking single boys 
or girls to lonely country homes, where everything 
is so utterly out of sympathy with tlieir former en- 
vironment. 

In our truant schools it has been found necessary 
to introduce hand work and so interesting does this 
become that we often find good boys playing truant 
that they may be sent there where they "learn to 
make things with their hands." 

In schools for feeble-minded children it is often 
found that mental activity can only be aroused 
through the physical. So in our prisons frequently 
the first signs of an awakening of the mental and 
moral faculties come through some training of the 
physical. 

In a small denominational school a plant for in- 
dustrial training was put in a few years ago, but no 
teacher could be found who could or would teach 
the ideals of labor by example, and the plan was ap- 
proaching failure, when a principal took charge from 
one of the agricultural colleges. He came prepared 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 65 

with overalls and blouse, and, with the genuine en- 
thusiasm of a trained horticulturist and botanist, at 
once called for volunteers to work in the garden 
zvith him as a daily task. Very soon the labor caste 
which had been established was all swept away and 
the pupils vied with each other for the privilege of 
working in the garden and shops with their favorite 
teacher, who had the winning spirit which comes 
from high mental culture and a love for Nature's 
ways, and whose hands had the cunning and skill 
with tools that made his work like the magic touch 
of the artist's pencil, a charm that is always attractive 
and always wins. 

In this school, as in all manual training schools, it 
was found that the work settled all problems of dis- 
cipline. 

"Education should Ht for complete living, not to 
create a literary aristocracy T — Herbert Spencer. 

PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 

In one of our Southern cities a Primary Industrial 
School for the neglected children of the factories 
was started as a philanthropy, and has proven such 
a success that it has been made a part of the public 
school system. These children would not attend the 
schools devoted wholly to memory cramming, but 
when the industrial training was introduced were 
eager to take part. 



66 INDUSTRIAL AND 

SUBURBAN CITY AND CONCENTRATED COUNTRY SCHOOLS. 

It has been suggested that one desirable change 
in city schools would be to take the schools away 
from the congested districts into the suburbs, where 
every school building could be surrounded by green 
grass, with fresh air and ample playgrounds among 
flowers, trees and gardens. This would stop the 
growth of slums and slum elements, as children once 
used to such environments would never again desire 
or be willing to go to slum conditions. 

We deem this thoroughly practical, and not so 
radical a change as the rapidly extending system of 
concentrating the country schools carrying the chil- 
dren to and from school at public expense, with the 
advantages immensely more. In both cases there 
would be plenty of room to introduce complete 
manual training. The street cars can carry pupils 
at a cent each at a profit and children so educated 
would surely become a "new and superior order of 
people," and such a system of "Summer Garden 
Schools" as we have described could be one of the 
most valuable and important features of our regular 
common school course. 

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING. 

"Our agricultural interests, either in view of their 
domestic value, or as exports, are the most important 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 67 

interests of the nation, yet they are least perfectly de- 
veloped of any." — Prest. Geo. T. Powell. 

"No nation will long survive the decay of its Agri- 
culture." — Thos. Jefferson. 

"The strength and glory of a nation depends on its 
tillers of the soil." — Thos. Jefferson. 

Not only is agriculture one of the most important 
industries, but its study and practice is one of the 
most inspiring and elevating to man's moral nature, 
and the great, historic characters, from Moses' time 
till today, have come from the discipline and spirit- 
ual uplift of some type of agricultural pursuit. 

One of the most interesting studies and move- 
ments along the line of progress in advancing indus- 
trial culture and agricultural science has been started in 
the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the former 
state, primary and some advanced study of scientific 
agriculture is being advocated for all the common 
schools, the effort having been initiated by the able 
head of the agricultural department of the State Uni- 
versity, Professor Hayes, who has also presented a 
most practical plan for concentrating from ten to fif- 
teen adjacent school districts into one high school of 
agriculture and allied sciences. As up-to-date farm- 
ing requires a general knowledge and ability in sev- 
eral of the handicraft trades, such schools will nat- 
urally need to teach a variety of mechanic arts to 



68 INDUSTRIAL AND 

agricultural pupils, and they will soon see the need 
of making provision for the boys and girls from the 
villages and towns, who will also need a wide variety 
of industrial education, with the fundamental train- 
ing in some phases of agricultural science. The nat- 
ural evolution of the best methods must bring more 
or less of the self-supporting principle into use, if, as 
we are fully persuaded, it is the best and most sci- 
entific method for gaining an industrial training. 

The suggestion is one of great promise for the fu- 
ture, and is in efifect being adopted in several states, 
and will no doubt become as universal as any branch 
of the public system of instruction in the new de- 
mocracy that is to be. 

This is but the first step toward the equipment of 
the youth of the coming age for higher and yet 
higher attainments in "complete living." 

President Patterson of the Cash Register Com- 
pany says that at present about 98 per cent of the 
pupils leave the schools with no training at all in any 
branch of agriculture, when the percentage should be 
reversed, or, better still, when no pupil should be 
allowed to leave without thorough knowledge in 
some branch of agricultural lore, the working to- 
gether with God in nature to produce the needs of 
life. 

In Wisconsin the Superintendent of Schools, Pro- 
fessor Harvey, was sent to Europe to study particu- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 69 

larly what could be learned of their methods of agri- 
cultural education. He came home with startling 
reports of the much larger number of agricultural 
colleges, in proportion to the inhabitants, than in 
this country; and the state, at his suggestion, has 
started a movement to have an agricultural school for 
every county, the plan being to have the state bear 
one-half the expense and the county the other half. 
Professor Harvey's bulletin containing his report of 
agricultural and industrial education in Europe and 
outlining his plans for progress here is very inspiring 
reading for any one who hopes for progress in the 
fundamental art of establishing a high grade of citi- 
zenship. 

Alabama, New York and some other states are 
already moving in the same direction, and a bill has 
been presented in Congress for government aid in 
furthering the work so hopeful for the future. 

Not only is agriculture the most important indus- 
try in a material sense for the nation, but the efifects 
of its study and practice on the moral and spiritual 
nature are the most elevating and inspiring, and it 
has always developed the greatest and strongest 
characters in the world's history, and therefore 
should be considered the most important science in 
an educational curriculum. Whenever the educa- 
tional system of the nation is reformed to the de- 
gree of having for its main purpose, its sole aim, the 



70 INDUSTRIAL AND 

development of the highest average of citizenship in 
mental and spiritual attainments, then will the teach- 
ing of some phase of agricultural lore be considered 
as fundamental as the multiplication table. And for 
this we plead with every organized argicultural in- 
terest or labor union; it is the one thing that each 
and every child should be taught as a portion of the 
A, B, C of his training for the duties of citizenship. 
The least with which any one should be at all satis- 
fied for any child of city or slum would be a course 
in a Summer Garden School or an Agricultural High 
School. 

In this age of research, if agriculture is to retain 
its proper place as the most exalted and exalting vo- 
cation, it must be made scientific and the charm of 
all technical knowledge brought to bear to make it 
the choice of the liberally educated. It must be so 
changed that not a suspicion of labor caste taint can 
attach to the educated farmer. 

Edward Bellamy once truly said that in no other 
line of large staple production is there such a lack 
of system and science, nor such a waste of effort. If 
there were no other reason for the change to a Free 
Universal System of Industrial Education, this alone 
would be sufficient. 

In the new and better social order which is surely 
coming, the new "Triumph of Democracy," of which 
the demand for universal free industrial training is 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 71 

but one of the many indications, there will be new 
and dominating social and educational standards, as 
far above the present as the present are above those 
of the past feudal times, when the men and women 
of the estate were considered as only a portion of 
the appurtenances of the barons' establishment, 
handy things to have for use or for defense but with 
scant rights to be respected and no mental culture 
to be thought of as belonging to their caste. 

And only when all the children have a fairly full 
course in some line of agricultural study; some taste 
of skilled gardening or floriculure ; a botanic knowl- 
edge of food plants; a course in the wonders of bac- 
teria, both useful and destructive, and in the chem- 
istry of soils, foods, fertilizers, grains and vegetable 
growths, with a general knowledge of the varied 
fruits, how to improve, propagate and adapt them to 
various localities, how to preserve and select, to ship 
and to sell, only when all these widely varied branches 
of these most interesting and charming fields of in- 
tellectual growth are fully taught in schools open and 
free as air to every boy and girl of this Republic, 
only then may we claim that necessary progress along 
this line has come to an approximate end, or even lay 
claim to a fairly well developed system. 

As we learn that it took nearly fifty years of per- 
sistent agitation in the days of our fathers fully to 
establish the idea that the common school was a 



72 INDUSTRIAL AND 

necessity, so may we be willing to work as long as 
needful for this next great step upward and forward 
along the same general pathway. 

THE ELEVATION OF THE RACES. 

For the elevation of the races nothing has proven 
so valuable as agricultural training, and, radical as 
the proposition may seem, it is our conviction, after 
much study and many visits to different schools, con- 
tinuing for weeks in several cases, that it would be 
better for both races if every school for both Indian 
and Negro were closed where no industrial training 
is combined with literary studies, and that in the 
South only those schools conducted in this way are 
of any value in solving the race problem. All others 
lead away from the ideal of the dignity of labor, and 
in quite too many cases create a useless, idle and 
often vicious class, who have learned to imitate the 
vices of the dominant race, but do not emulate their 
virtues, for when the uplift of skilled labor is lack- 
ing education only creates wants that the hands have 
not acquired the skill to provide. 

At Hampton, Tuskegee and many other like 
places we get the true spirit that uplifts and prepares 
for the active duties of life and the higher enjoy- 
ments of an advanced civilization. 

The very fact that the colored race has social, 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 73 

economic and political aspirations and ambitions, 
whatever of ridiculous and vexing embarrassments 
they may bring temporarily, should after all be cause 
for hope and congratulation for the future. For any 
country to have a large element with no hopes, no 
aims, no desire for progress and betterment and no 
ambition for a share in governmental functions, 
would mean a mass of inertia most dangerous and 
detrimental. 

Professor Dubois and Colonel Graves, and all 
who would defend the purely literary type of schools 
for race elevation, will do well to ponder carefully 
our main proposition that one of the essential con- 
trasts between a true Christian or scientific civiliza- 
tion and the pagan type is largely in the widely 
varying concepts in regard to labor and its sacred 
ofifice in race development. 

If the great Froebel's concept is correct, that man 
is a creative being, that this is his highest attribute 
and that all civilization is but the creative labor of 
man, then when this fundamental proposition is 
properly apprehended, the best method for all school 
systems will settle itself, and men will needs be 
eager to bring this attribute to highest perfection. 

Professor Dubois, while ably accentuating the 
importance of a high degree of training for teachers, 
entirely begs the question as to which type of school 
is best for race development, in his claim that all the 



74 INDUSTRIAL AND 

industrial schools have some teachers from the lit- 
erary institutions. He cannot but be aware of the 
patent fact that the superior industrial schools have 
been vastly fewer than the others, and also of the 
other equally plain proposition that, according- to 
the universal and dominant law of humanity, to try 
to imitate those who are supposed to be above them 
in social standing has naturally led the bright and 
ambitious young colored people to the schools most- 
ly patronized by the white people, and both have 
drifted into the idea that an education means mainly 
memorizing from text books, and that a college edu- 
cation means escape from the drudgery of labor, as 
it has come to be understood. There can be no ques- 
tion but that in spite of the lack of the best methods, 
these bright and ambitious young people, when 
transplanted to the more wholesome atmosphere 
of Hampton, Tuskegee et al., will soon catch the 
spirit of the place and become valuable teachers; but 
this is no proof whatever that they would not have 
been better teachers if trained more correctly from 
the first; and if labor had been made scientific, and 
skill in it taught as an accomplishment instead of a 
drudgery, all the teachers and preachers of the race 
would have exerted a much higher and more bene- 
ficial influence on their struggling- people. 

The able and accomplished chancellor of a great 
university, who declared he had learned three trades 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 75 

since he became a college professor, and found in the 
shop work his best mental recuperation, and thereby- 
gained power for his daily work in the class room, 
is a strong proof of all we plead for as the most pow- 
erful aid in race progress and the only hope of the 
colored races coming to any self-reliant, self-respect- 
ing position in civilization. 

No doubt Professor Dubois will repel our sug- 
gestion that the type of theological seminary founded 
on the example set by St. Paul is the kind essen- 
tially needed for race uplift; it was rejected by the 
arrogant Roman aristocracy of the time, to whom it 
was so repugnant that they took ofif his head to stop 
the heresy, and degraded the ministry into an alms- 
taking, non-working class, from which it has never 
fully emerged. 

If the able pleader for the good of "black men's 
souls" will carefully study the matter out, he will 
come to the same conclusion as the great, if not the 
greatest, friend of his race, "that a lot of the facts 
we learn in school are not so," and must be "un- 
learned in life," and that much that he has learned 
in the so-called "best white schools" is not the best 
for the white race, and utterly fatal to the elevation 
of his own race, who no doubt must travel the same 
pathway as all other races and let the hand lead the 
brain, as Nature decrees. 

We will dare suggest that very likely it may yet 



•j^ INDUSTRIAL AND 

prove best for his race, if they are to grow into a 
high social state, to follow the essential rule for the 
boy in learning to swim, to go by themselves and 
work out the problem unaided by the dominant race, 
who will no doubt always hold them to a lower place 
socially and politically, and will always exploit them 
economically. Of one thing we may be certain: to 
arouse ambition along any line and not teach the 
hands how to satisfy the aroused ambition, is of all 
things most cruel. The preachers or teachers of the 
weaker race, whose example or teaching is tainted 
with the ideals of a labor caste, are surely doing 
them an injury; while those who teach a self-reliant, 
self-supporting, industrial independence are but fol- 
lowing the lessons of the great social reformer, St. 
Paul, whose efforts were along very similar lines. 

Professor Dubois speaks of "Industrial Educa- 
tion" as "adapted to needs of artisans," and of the 
"long-established and approved methods for the edu- 
cation of the white race," apparently oblivious of the 
fact that in the minds of a vast and constantly in- 
creasing number of people a handicraft education is 
best for all learned professions, and the "long-estab- 
lished methods of education" have been heartily con- 
demned by many most scientific minds, and are like 
almost all systems and customs "long established," 
far behind the progress of a scientific age, and only 
held in place by the law of inertia. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 7^ 

DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES. 

The colored people of the South seem to be drift- 
ing into two sharply defined classes. One class, rep- 
resented by the graduates of such schools as Hamp- 
ton and Tuskegee, proud of the skill of their hands 
and what they can do that is useful, are at work try- 
ing to win respect and consideration by their merits 
and progress; while the other class, led by the grad- 
uates of purely literary schools, is aggressively, and 
sometimes insolently, demanding social and political 
recognition. And from this class, quite as much to 
be pitied as blamed for a false ideal gained by imitat- 
ing a false standard, comes the class that is the clog 
and hindrance to their normal progress. 

If they ever get a colored republic or separate 
state, it is the former class alone who will make its 
success possible, while one of the heaviest burdens 
will be the latter class, those who know more of 
Greelc than of the laws of mechanics, more of Latin 
than of the science of agriculture, and who, through 
unfortunate imitation of the dominant race, have im- 
bibed the ideal suggested by Herbert Spencer, that the 
object of an education is to produce a "literary aristo- 
cracy" rather than to fit for "complete living." If, in- 
stead of all this, the colored preachers and teachers will 
but study and imitate the example of the great 
preacher and social reformer, St. Paul, who knew 



78 INDUSTRIAL AND 

and taught the essential nobility of skilled labor as 
the foundation of a Christian civilization, the worst 
phases of the race problem will soon be solved. 

In almost all the Southern towns the worse 
menace to law and progress is to be found in the 
large class of fairly educated young colored men, 
who can write a good hand and have a fair education 
from text books, but having no trade, can only work 
at the commonest and least paid industries. As 
they have also the idea that they must gain their 
living by their wits, they drift into crime as naturally 
as ducks into water. From this class comes much 
if not all of the active prejudice against Northern- 
supported colored schools, while the universal testi- 
mony is that those who have trades are the thrifty, 
law-abiding class, whose progress is a hope for the 
race. 

The many colored preachers who have thus im- 
bibed the unscientific and un-Christian aversion to 
skilled labor from the type of schools they have at- 
tended, are powerless to come into any helpful touch 
with the unfortunate loafing class, and thus their 
influence is neutralized where most needed. 

"These hands ministered to my necessities, and to 
those zvith me." — Saint Paul. 

CIVILIZATION IN HAVTI AND SAN DOMINGO. 

"Labor is God's education for man." — Emerson. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 79 

Along few lines of general interest has there been 
more misinformation or more unjust conclusions 
than in regard to the so-called failure of the attempts 
to elevate the freedmen of Hayti and San Domingo, 
a striking example of a thing the world has known 
so surely and so long, that is not so. 

Again and again with fullest assurance has it been 
asserted in the press and from the platform that all 
efforts to raise the freed colored and mixed races of 
Hayti and San Domingo have proven futile, and they 
have been believed to be incapable of elevation to 
any great degree of civilization, or mental improve- 
ment, and we are told that they must be given over 
to riot and revolution, unless held down by the 
strong hand of the "superior races." 

But recently a student statesman of Hayti, who 
knows whereof he afifirms, declares that the apparent 
failure has come from the unnatural and unscientific 
methods of education pursued alike by both public 
and missionary schools, which have attempted to be- 
gin in the air and build a mental culture with no 
foundation on the earth of pride or skill in the essen- 
tials of industry and labor. The natives have seen 
the disinclination of their superiors and teachers to 
labor and following that universal trait of humanity 
to imitate those socially above us have felt that text 
book lore was not compatible with pride in handi- 
craft accomplishment. They have been taught the 



8o INDUSTRIAL AND 

spelling book instead of gardening, higher mathe- 
matics and Latin instead of the fundamental art of 
tillage, and as naturally as water flows down grade, 
these people, following the false standards, have 
tried to live by their wits instead of by honest toil 
and have drifted into riot and revolution, for the 
simple reason that they have no industrial system 
in which they have any pride or interest. 

Here then we have the true reason for all this de- 
cadent race history, this discouraging phase of the 
race problem — the heads of these people have been 
filled with the dry text book lore, with facts and data 
that have so little to do with active life, and particu- 
larly for newly made freedmen, while the hands are 
all untaught, no pride in useful achievement culti- 
vated, the very foundations of a progressive social 
order neglected, and a false pride established in fol- 
lowing the example of the teachers and preachers of 
the dominant race to eschew all possible labor of the 
hands, all the creative attribute of man, the highest 
given; is it any wonder they have drifted into riot 
and revolution? They have no industrial system in 
which the ambitious can find a field for their best 
efforts and so have fulfilled the old adage more 
truthful than elegant: "Satan finds some mischief 
still for idle hands to do." 

And the world, all untaught in a correct social sci- 
ence, has stood aghast, and declared that the colored 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 8i 

race could not attain to the civilization of the white 
race, a statement as impious as it is unscientific. 
Knowing what we now do of the success of such 
schools as Hampton and Tuskegee, can there be a 
shadow of doubt that if there had been such in Hayti 
and San Domingo, and hand-craft had preceded 
head-craft as Nature provides, and pride and ambi- 
tion in industry been made the corner-stone of their 
teaching, they would have had a hopeful progressive 
history? 

THE PITIFUL FILIPINO FARCE. 

"If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into 
the pit." — Bible. 

Now we get word that the same pitiful farce is be- 
ing repeated in the Philippines, under the auspices 
of our government schools. The teachers having 
been miseducated themselves, are scattering the poi- 
son of a false system in the dark places and thus 
fulfilling the Scripture adage in regard to the lead- 
ing of the bHnd. 

A letter recently received from a friend who has 
been a government teacher in the Philippines and 
who has had a long and successful experience in this 
country as a college president, an intense student of 
sociology and a humanitarian of wide sympathies, 
tells of all this. He declares that he pleaded earn- 



82 INDUSTRIAL AND 

estly that the first steps in educating the native 
should be along industrial lines, but the imported 
American teachers had no hand-craft skill them- 
selves and no approximate appreciation of its value 
as the first step in an advanced social order, so they 
taught as they had been taught, imparting involun- 
tarily the idea that to be educated and cultured is to 
avoid work and that labor is only for slaves and in- 
feriors, and he declares it has done untold harm and 
thousands of the natives have been spoiled for ever 
becoming practical, efficient citizens in the new civ- 
ilization. They are puflfed up with conceit and van- 
ity because they have a little smattering of English, 
and can put their names on paper, but have no am- 
bition or pride in skill in gardening or any phase of 
industrial life. 

A few agricultural schools and experiment sta- 
tions are a great benefit to the older farmers and 
the few who get their teachings, but nothing can 
take the place of imparting to the youthful masses 
the fundamentals of an advancing civihzation that 
must come from skill in tillage and the arts that nat- 
urally flow from it and from using the creative tal- 
ents that alone bring to man at-one-ment with his 
Creator. 

THE CONTRAST IN JAMAICA. 

"Righteousness exalteth a nation." — Bible. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 83 

Under the more humane rule of the British in 
Jamaica,, the freedmen have been taught something 
of progressive agriculture and have made a slow but 
steady improvement. The relations of the races 
have been pleasant, no infamous crimes on record, 
no lynchings or mobs called for. With better schools 
and more complete training in a variety of mechanic 
arts they would have attained a higher social devel- 
opment, for there can be no question but the evolu- 
tionary movements can be accelerated in this way. 

We now learn that some promising young men 
from all these Islands of the Sea are in attendance 
at Tuskegee and Hampton, where a broader train- 
ing is given, so we may hope that in the future there 
will be a more rapid progress and that the days of 
riot and revolution, tumult and turbulance will be 
no more. 

ANGLO-SAXON RACE PRIDE. 

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty 
spirit before a fall." — Bible. 

We need not be too arrogant in our race pride 
when we look back over the bloody pathway by 
which we have come up from the time when the great 
preacher of a better civilization, St. Paul, took his 
life in his hands, to preach to the heathen on British 
soil, who were then sacrificing human beings to 
their superstitions. 



84 INDUSTRIAL AND 

Neither the record of the cruel past nor the reve- 
lations of the present are conducive to our pride in 
our so-called "Christ-like" social order. It is not at 
all flattering to our race to read Editor Stead's ex- 
posure of the unspeakable atrocities of the so-called 
"nobility," nor General Booth's "Darkest England" 
and the "Submerged Tenth" in a land that boasts 
of being the richest nation on the earth. One Eng- 
lish writer of world-wide prominence declared that 
England is still in the main pagan, with a few spots 
covered with a thin veneer of Christianity and these 
spots making the surrounding paganism more 
hideous in contrast. 

And when we study our own country, with all our 
boast of freedom and progress, we find the atrocity 
of "child slavery" in our factories, with an army of 
men without any way of earning an honest living. 
We have not yet evolved the science of social ad- 
justment to such a degree that we may be very 
proud of our racial superiority, or we would not al- 
low this, nor permit thousands of children to come up 
in the slums where it is impossible that they become 
anything but human monsters, costing millions to 
keep them in a state of subjection for the safety of 
the favored ones. 

It was a pagan emperor who said that a nation 
could not expect to survive long that derived its 
main revenues from the vices of its people, yet we 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 85 

are still deriving our principal revenue from the 
most destructive vice of our people and our children 
are taught in schools tinctured with pagan folly, and 
denominated "murderous" by able critics. 

Surely we too may well begin to study fundamen- 
tals, and we should be very patient with the appar- 
ently slow progress of neglected races until we de- 
velop enough of the "Science of Society" to know 
how to maintain our own standards and rightly help 
those who have not yet had even our imperfect ad- 
vantages. 

THE GREAT OBERLIn's EXAMPLE. 

"What man has done, man may do again/' 

— Ancient Proverb. 

All our farcical failure to elevate the Indians, and 
now the Filipinos and other neglected people, is 
in striking contrast to the success of the great Ober- 
lin, who perhaps caused one of the greatest social 
reforms on the largest scale of any in recorded his- 
tory. He began his work by establishing an agri- 
cultural school and taught the wild, rude, robber na- 
tives of the Pyrenees an improved agriculture as 
the first step in a moral betterment; and so on from 
this fundamental beginning till he changed the whole 
people of the province, from the poorest, most 
wicked and degraded, to the most refined, intelli- 
gent and thrifty of any in the nation. 



86 INDUSTRIAL AND 

His history and great success is one of the most 
convincing and inspiring proofs of our whole con- 
tention possible. 

THE PEOPLE MUST MAKE THE CHANGE. 

'^All great reforms must come up from- the com- 
mon people." — Ancient Egyptian Proverb. 

From a venerable and venerated friend whose 
thought is always candid and able comes the sugges- 
tion that the reforms we ask must perforce come 
from the demand of the people themselves, that what 
is demanded by the need of the times and the 
aroused spirit of the world is so far away from the 
conventional established ideal it cannot be wrought 
out by the present professional educators; they have 
not the power to stem the tide of established cus- 
tom, but it must be brought about by the united de- 
mand of the people and the progressive teachers who 
have already seen the wrong of the present and the 
hope of the better system, whose eyes are open to 
the coming light, and who see the fundamental need 
of the time. 

"The teachers of the old system fool themselves, 
and mislead their pupils into the belief that a literary 
course alone can make scholars." — JV. H. Page. 

TEACHING BY EXAMPLE. 

The greatest criticism we would make of our 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 87 

agricultural colleges and schools, where wide indus- 
trial training has been introduced, is that teachers 
who are in the literary department do not teach in- 
dustries, and vice versa, and thus exemplify to their 
pupils the proper relation between mental culture 
and pride in skilled labor. 

At one of the great industrial centers the Greek 
professor is the blacksmith, and has the same pride 
in his work at the forge that he has in his transla- 
tions. In one school with which we are familiar the 
professor of agriculture not only superintends the 
raising of the products, but also teaches the pupils 
the chemistry of the same, and then insists that they 
shall know how to cook them. But we know of very 
few such instances. 

That such a revolutionary change in our whole 
educational system must be a matter of growth will 
be admitted; but that it need be a matter of slow 
growth we emphatically deny. The need and de- 
mand for it is too great and immediate, and the 
steps already taken assure its success. 

PREVENTION OF CRIME. 

"Universal Industrial training will be self-sustain- 
ing to the state in the prevention of crime." 

— John Ruskin. 

The civihzation of the North stands aghast at the 



88 INDUSTRIAL AND 

vast waste of child life in our cities and the enor- 
mous cost of crime that comes from neglected chil- 
dren whom we know could be educated into good 
and profitable citizens; and this alone is sufficient 
motive for the change that will save this vast outlay 
for crime and its results by guiding the hands of the 
young toward useful, skilled, creative labor that will 
aid in both mental and moral uplift. The case here 
is urgent. It brooks no delay. One eminent writer 
sets the cost of preventable crime and accessories 
in one city at forty million dollars per year, and 
fully six hundred millions for the whole country. 
What would not this vast sum do in reasonable, sci- 
entific educational prevention, in making of the 
street waifs skilled, intelligent, thrifty citizens? 

A hundred George Junior Republics filled with the 
neglected children of the slums would be as economi- 
cal as patriotic in educating the waifs toward useful 
citizenship. It is claimed that an average of over 
eighty per cent, of the graduates of the Minnesota 
Reform School become good citizens. And these, it 
will be remembered, are of the bad boys sent to be re- 
claimed, and industry is the main thing depended 
on for reforming them, vvhile it is claimed that 
from sixty to seventy per cent of the average village 
and city boys who have no industrial training go to 
the bad. 

The civilization of the Southland has an equally 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 89 

or even more ominous question in the race problem, 
with a vast ilHterate contingent of poor whites, all 
of whom stand as a portentous menace to the fu- 
ture, but who may all be turned into useful, thrifty 
and law-abiding citizens if we will begin their up- 
lift in the way God and Nature intended; if we will 
but reverse our present rude and undeveloped sys- 
tem and give that the first place which Nature gives 
to every child born into this world, the desire and 
ability to learn its first lessons through its hands. 

THE SLOW AND UNPRECOCIOUS. 

Under the present system it is usual at an early 
age to condemn to bread winning and factory slav- 
ery those pupils who seem in any way slow or de- 
ficient in power or inclination to acquire the conven- 
tional type of education. This is a great wrong 
both to society and the individual; for, if it be ad- 
mitted that the development of a higher form of av- 
erage democracy is the pathway of true progress, 
then should the slow and less ably endowed, the 
weak and simple, have extra pains taken to develop 
what intellectual and productive ability they have to 
the highest possible point, not only to enhance their 
value to the state and to society, but also that their 
children may have the heredity of better parentage. 
We dare claim that, among any given one thousand 
of the so-called "poor scholars" who are prematurely 



90 INDUSTRIAL AND 

doomed to an early slavery at bread winning, with 
the minimum of mental training and with no hand 
training at all, in any thousand of such will be found 
many capable of becoming men and women of mark, 
of genius, if they could be led along for a few years 
and have the advantages of hand culture and a 
chance to study mechanic arts or industrial training 
in some of its branches which are adapted to their 
peculiar mental drift. 

It is a well attested fact that many men and wom- 
en of exceptional ability are late and slow in giving 
any evidence of strong mental power, and may never 
do so until some mechanical or technical study, some 
form of handicraft training, brings to the surface 
unexpected talents of a high order. 

In this manner will colleges and universities based 
on the plan of alternate study and work, and that 
shall hold pupils until years of maturity, be of ines- 
timable value, both in creating a higher average of 
intelligence among all, and also (and of greatest im- 
portance) in finding and bringing out many men and 
women of rare merit and usefulness, who, under the 
present system, are almost totally lost to the world 
and doomed, like the flowers of the desert, to bloom 
unseen and unknown. We are fully persuaded that 
if there were no other reason for the demand for a 
self-supporting system of schools for higher educa- 
tion than this alone, it would be ample for a most 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 91 

comprehensive effort to establish such schools in 
every county in the whole land, to promote the 
higher average of the citizenship by cultivating the 
slow and unprecocious and by developing the latent 
geniuses from those who only come to their full 
powers at a later age. 

"Had Caesar, Napoleon, Columbus, Shakespeare 
Sir Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, or Herbert Spencer 
been assigned by fate the lack of an education, or the 
dreary toil of an Irish bog laborer, what would their 
native talents have availedf" — Henry George. 

ELEVATING LABOR VERSUS DEGRADING DRUDGERY. 

"What thy hands find to do, do it with thy might." 

— The Bible. 

Convinced as we are that true labor is a God-like 
attribute, exalting and ennobling when normally ex- 
ercised, we are also aware that it can be so imposed 
upon men as to become drudgery, enslaving and de- 
moralizing in the extreme. Booker Washington 
tersely expressed this when he said, "To work, to 
work, TO WORK (for one's own) is the height of Chris- 
tian civilization ; but to be worked, to be worked, to 
BE WORKED (for another's profit) is the barbarism of 
slavery." 

William Morris would put into all labor the 
ideals of the artist, have all possible skill, knowi- 



92 INDUSTRIAL AND 

edge and intelligence in regard to the correlated sci- 
ences and thus feel the joy of working to contribute 
to the needs of the world. The effort done in this 
spirit, even the digging of a sewer, may become a 
joyful service and a means of spiritual growth to the 
worker. To know how to exc^I and to take pride in 
superior accomplishments makes the whole differ- 
ence between drudgery and art. We see this differ- 
ence between scientific agriculture and ignorant 
farming, and this wide contrast may be seen in every 
vocation and in every form of labor, and for this 
quality of mental uplift of the workers there is no 
way but to develop the mental powers, cultivate the 
artist spirit, and at the same time make skillful the 
hands that do the world's work. The result will be 
such an average of high moral purpose, joy and effi- 
ciency as the world has never yet seen. "To mix 
brains with our hand work" is but a homely expres- 
sion for this wide contrast between the labor that 
blesses and the drudgery that degrades, and the man 
or woman who knows all the scientific relations of 
the material manipulated by his or her hands has a 
delight in work to be had in no other way. If to this 
be added the joy of serving a person or a cause, then 
the highest blessings on earth may come from labor 
which otherwise might be drudgery of basest degree. 
With modern forces for production, it is unques- 
tionable that four to six hours of labor each day 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 93 

would supply the world with a plenitude of luxuries 
such as princes now might envy; and this amount of 
labor would be only what is needful for healthful ex- 
ercise, and, when done with proper aim and method, 
would give a moral ,and spiritual uplift unequaled 
by any other means. All men do not now have the 
opportunity to work. With shorter hours and the 
worker receiving his due proportion of the product 
all could be employed. All this should be included 
in a new system of education that shall propose the 
training of head, hands and heart as a trinity of 
equal importance in the building of character and 
in soul growth. 

With this as the motive for reorganizing our whole 
educational force, we may confidently look forward 
to such an evolution of the "religion of democracy," 
to the development of such a high average of citi- 
zenship as the world has never seen, with the growth 
of all the grandest ideals of an international unity 
of spirit and interest among men as shall make the 
hideousness of war a thing unthinkable and unheard 
of again. 

With such an average citizenship as we shall have 
when a full industrial college and university course 
is given freely to every child, we may be sure such 
a social order will be developed as will make the 
adoption of a short working day imperative, and the 
people, cultured in art and science, will develop a 



94 INDUSTRIAL AND 

perfection of human society such as has only been 
dreamed of by the poets of past ages. The millen- 
nium epoch may be surely looked for with unquestion> 
ing faith. 

This will be the age spoken of by Ferguson when 
"the university will come to all free as air and 
glorious as sunshine," and the religion of democracy 
have its most holy accomplishment; and all this may 
begin its coming tomorrow, if we will. 

"It is unspeakably pernicious to think or speak of 
the development of humanity as stationary or com- 
pleted.'' — Froehel. 

That ziith student labor alone, an industrial educa- 
tion plant has been built ivorth over half a million dol- 
lars and at the same time the students have acquired 
a much better education than if the plant had been 
previously prepared and they had come zvith money to 
pay their zcay through a conventional course, is the 
second greatest achievement in importance in the edu- 
cational history of America. 

EQUIPMENT VERSUS ENDOWMENT. 

"Education is the most essential interest of the 
State." — Wendell Phillips. 

The time has come when seminaries, colleges and 
universities should no longer depend upon endow- 
ments for support, but rather upon industrial equip- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 95 

ment. During the past year the enormous sum of 
fifty to seventy millions of dollars has been put into 
endowment funds for facilities for higher education 
for the comparatively few. Vast as is the purchas- 
ing power of this great sum," it will scarcely produce 
a ripple in the educational history or progress of the 
nation, and will have no appreciable effect on the 
democratic progress of education for the masses, 
where help and progress are most needed. While, 
if even one-quarter of this had been put into the 
equipment of self-supporting industrial schools for 
all, it would have marked a new and distinct epoch 
in educational advance and set a new pace for the 
world's progress as noteworthy and as grand as did 
the great step of the heroic fathers of the Republic 
when they established the common school for the 
benefit of every boy and girl in the nation, a move- 
ment that required fifty years of vigorous agitation 
to establish. 

-This greatest achievement of our democratic 
fathers helped forward the evolution of the race more 
than it had moved in centuries. The establishment 
of a system of Free Industrial Self-supporting 
Schools and Colleges for all will be a step of equal 
if not greater importance in accelerating race prog- 
ress and advancing democratic civilization. 

There are many grave objections to the whole plan 
of endowments; the system has had its day. It is 



96 INDUSTRIAL AND 

time for something more democratic and not so 
tainted with pagan abuses. The whole system of en- 
dowed educational institutions is a relic of the age 
and concept that a few only should be provided with 
educational facilities and that the vast majority must 
toil in ignorance to produce the wealth needed for 
the favored few. It is an utterly pagan concept and 
system, out of date and place in a democratic and 
progressive age. 

An equipment of two hundred thousand dollars in 
farm, shop, factory and working material for a self- 
supporting school will care for more pupils than a 
conventional college having a full million-dollar en- 
dowment. The system of education under an in- 
dustrially equipped school will be a correct one, not 
a concession to false ideals, but dominated by the 
true democratic spirit of self-help and perfectly 
adapted to cultivating the creative attributes of the 
pupil. 

Then, too, a school depending upon endowments 
must always be more or less handicapped by the 
moral taints attaching to the moneys received, as 
were the schools founded by Captain Kidd from the 
proceeds of his peculiar economic system, even as 
later methods have tainted and compromised the 
schools dependent upon them for support. Again, 
the endowment system locks up enormous amounts 
of money in bonds, mortgages, etc., away from ac- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 97 

tive creative channels in commerce and industry, 
and places the influence of the school on the un- 
democratic and unscientific side of continuing high 
interest rates, always an undesirable condition and 
adverse to democratic progress. 

One noted school, which was founded on most 
radical ideals, has been so tainted with this spirit 
as to have won a most unenviable reputation as a 
stickler for high rates of interest and a merciless 
forecloser of farm mortgages, a most unworthy repu- 
tation for the moral influence of a great educational 
institution, which should be a radical leader along 
the line of true democracy; for along that line is the 
only true ideal of social progress. 

In well equipped industrial schools the strength 
and virility of teachers will be best conserved. 
Teachers who devote themselves to mental training 
only have a very severe tax upon nerve force and 
personal magnetism and vast numbers have broken 
down under this strain of nerve effort before their 
best years of matured service came, while in an in- 
dustrial school they would often have the restful 
change from brain to hand work, which is a natural 
recuperation, and in this manner retain for a much 
longer period the powers of nerve and magnetic 
forces so necessary for best success in leading and 
molding young lives. Last, but really most impor- 
tant of all, by working a portion of the time each 



98 INDUSTRIAL AND 

day with pupils, the teachers are setting the example 
and social standard of the union of culture with skill 
in creative labor or useful service which is one of the 
essentials in a scientific civilization and without 
which no social state can be made progressive or 
permanent. 

Were there no other reasons, the latter alone 
would justify the change; and we feel sure the com- 
ing reform and the highest ideals of progress are 
coming from and through the change from Endow- 
ments to Equipments. The one who demonstrates 
that a well equipped industrial school can be self- 
supporting will do a grand work for humanity and 
write his name large as a benefactor of his kind; and 
philanthropists who will equip such schools, or help 
to do so, will win renown as helpers of their race, 
and erect a more lasting monument than any marble 
or bronze placed for mere show. 

We are sure there are many of the smaller col- 
leges, now struggling with inadequate endowments 
or income, whose usefulness would be enhanced a 
hundredfold if they could and would change all or 
a portion of their endowments into an industrial 
equipment for self-support. They would then be in 
line with the rapidly advancing demands of the peo- 
ple who wish for the best type of a liberal or com- 
plete education, and in harmony with the ideals sug- 
gested in Herbert Spencer's able address, and 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 99 

more fully defined in the philosophy of the seer, 
Froebel. 

We also know that many philanthropists and 
prominent business men, when their attention is 
called to these ideas, are much more ready to help 
such schools, for any race or any section, than the 
schools for mental training alone. 

We deem it patent to all why our government 
should aid in establishing such practical schools at 
this time, and why our motto, "More for Schools 
AND Less for War," should become a national watch- 
word for all who hope for the time suggested by the 
eloquent Englishman, "when Americanism shall con- 
quer the whole world." For we can sooner conquer 
the world with the school than with the battleship. 
Ideas will penetrate deeper than rifle shot. 

Tremendously as the world has been taught to 
fear our "armor-clads" and the range of our artil- 
lery, they may yet stand in greater awe of the moral 
, and mental achievements of a nation of college- 
trained people. A perfected democracy will much 
sooner subdue the world than the best armaments. 
Exalted ideas will win and hold the allegiance of 
the coming peoples of all lands longer and better 
than the most perfect examples of brute force. 

When we decree that every child of this Republic 
shall have a full college course, a college course far 
more complete and thorough than any heretofore 



loo INDUSTRIAL AND 

given, it will thrill the world with a new expectancy 
of lofty achievement as yet unknown in the history 
of the race. It will, indeed, be an example of "Tri- 
umphant Democracy" that will set a new pace for 
the highest ideals of an ambitious generation. 

"Where there is a nnll, there is a way." — Proverb. 

"Life without zvork is guilt, and work zuithout art is 
brutality." — Ruskin. 

THE UNIVERSITY. 
AN INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL CENTER. 

When in all modern processes, from making a gar- 
den to a locomotive, there is a continual demand 
for the highest and most scientific study and skill, 
what could be more appropriate than that the uni- 
versity should be a great center of industrial activity 
where the students can work their way through the 
course of mental and hand culture, each a corrollary 
of the other, and then if they wish to remain in the 
atmosphere of learning, or to carry forward some 
post-graduate course of investigation, can still work 
on in their chosen vocation and enjoy the social 
privileges of tlie place, with the possibilities of self- 
supporting labor and mental ripening all provided 
for and open for their maintenance? Is not this 
whole ideal intensely practical and possible of attain- 
ment? 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION loi 

THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT YET LIVES. 

When the world is ready for any great advance 
in any Hne the prophecy of the coming change will 
be felt in many and far separated places at about 
the same time. When the world was ready to cast 
ofif the curse of human slavery the impulse was felt 
from Russia to San Domingo, from England and 
France to the United States at about the same mo- 
ment of historic time. When the world was ready 
for a great advance in labor-saving machinery, men 
of all sorts were found whittling models of sewing 
machines and reapers in many places and in many 
countries with no previous knowledge of each other's 
efforts, or why the inspiration came to them at the 
time. 

So has it been in this matter of a revolutonary 
change in the methods of our educational system. 
When in 1868 we penned our first conception of an 
industrial college, with its own plant, to be partially 
or quite self-supporting, and that should convey a 
better quality of mental discipline than the conven- 
tional college, some of whose graduates had deeply 
impressed us with the fact of their unpreparedness 
for life, we thought that we could flatter ourselves 
on being the first, or one of the very first, who had 
conceived the progressive plan. We have since 
learned of many others who had come to essentially 



104 INDUSTRIAL AND 

the same thought and had seen the need and value 
of training the hands and brain at the same time, 
and that each was a necessary portion of the needful 
training for life; and all this with no knowledge of 
each other, nor any knowledge of the writings of the 
great men who had been moved by the same spirit. 
Today there are hundreds who deeply feel that the 
change is now imminent and must come as soon as 
the needful men and methods can be evolved. 

The great-souled man, Col. Edward Daniels, who 
has already taken the first practical steps to intro- 
duce in Congress and in Legislatures bills for put- 
ting the movement into legal form, was at work 
preaching the gospel and stirring the thoughts of 
many in his wide acquaintance to see the great need 
of the movement. Now it awaits the power of com- 
bined numbers to enact the laws that shall make it 
as well an established custom as the common school 
has become, which in its inception took a full gen- 
eration of most energetic agitation before it was 
adopted by the several states of the then small and 
struggling beginnings of this now mighty nation — a 
nation which can waste more each year in tawdry 
ornamentation than the whole thing will cost, and 
where the cost of preventable crime is more than the 
total assessed value of the property of the fathers at 
the time they took this great step. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 103 

CAN COLLEGES BE MADE SELF-SUPPORTING? 

"The grandest achievements of the race are those 
that have been proved impossible." 

— J as. L. Hughes. 

To most of our readers the above question will im- 
mediately present itself, and in answering it the 
mental process will, no doubt, in most cases, follow 
about the same lines as those of an eminent and vet- 
eran educator when first presented with the proposi- 
tion of free universal industrial training as the next 
step in educational progress and an essential in social 
evolution. 

He at once assented to the value and importance 
of the union of hand and head culture for all as vastly 
desirable and to the idea that the time is ripe for the 
movement, and that it would pay in various ways. 
In prevention of crime, he admitted it would be most 
efficient, that it would produce a citizenship of re- 
markably increased power as wealth producers, and 
after careful thought he declared, "Whether it can 
be wholly self-sustaining or not is unimportant, quite 
incidental. We need such a system of universal 
training for all the people, at any cost to the state, 
to keep up with the needs and demands of social 
growth; but it seems chimerical to expect it can be 
made fully self-sustaining and not hinder its fullest 
usefulness as a general system for scientific and liter- 
ary study." 



I04 INDUSTRIAL AND 

After a few weeks of study upon the plans and pos- 
sibilities of a system of self-support, he declared his 
full conviction that not only could industrial schools 
for pupils of fifteen or over be made fully self-sus- 
taining, but that they could be made to pay a fair 
dividend on the needed capital for equipment and 
at the same time impart a quality of education far 
above that of the average college or university that 
adhered to the old process of mind discipline to the 
total neglect of hand training, now so popular among 
those who have indulgent friends to pay their bills 
and help them to attain that kind of education whose 
chief accomplishment is often, as Spencer declared, 
to create a type of "literary aristocracy," of but little 
use in preparation for the higher ideals of complete 
living. 

Another educator, of international reputation, de- 
clared it is perfectly practical and in every way de- 
sirable and added that in his own school many pupils 
now gain complete support by working three hours 
per day five days in the week and eight hours on 
Saturday, and this with no detriment, but rather a 
decided advantage to their progress and efficiency 
in the academic courses; and all this with no organ- 
ized system, and the pupils obliged to pay retail 
prices for everything needed, or from four to six 
times as much as the actual labor cost if produced in 
a plant established as a working portion of the 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 105 

school. This is a most important factor, not usually 
understood by those who only think casually on the 
subject. 

According to the published reports of the United 
States Census Bureau, and confirmed by tlie Commis- 
sioner of Labor, the labor cost of the average prod- 
ucts is only about sixteen per cent, of the price at 
which they are sold at retail. As many oT the prod- 
ucts of the school plant would not be produced quite 
as cheaply as in commercial factories, although 
much better in quality, it may be safe to estimate a 
labor cost of one fourth the prices usually paid by 
teachers and pupils. 

We see at once that if students can earn the min- 
imum wage of only ten to twenty cents per hour, and 
work only twenty to twenty-four hours per week, 
they can earn a sum that will mean self-support, even 
though they pay retail prices for everything, and be 
more than self-supporting when the necessaries of 
life can be obtained at the actual labor cost. In this 
way the cost of living for teachers will also be 
greatly reduced. 

We deem it only necessary to refer to the well- 
known facts in regard to many of our agricultural 
colleges, our many trade and industrial schools of 
various kinds, and to the well-known schools of 
Hampton and Tuskegee, in all of which no effort 
has been made or suggested to accomplish en- 



lo6 INDUSTRIAL AND 

tire self-support, but where one fourth to two thirds 
of the running expenses have been equaled by the 
productive value of the work of the schools, to prove 
beyond the possibility of question that when the 
efifort is really and earnestly made to establish 
schools of entire self-support, it can be done by 
carrying a little further along a system already an 
established success and of most uniform beneficial 
results to the quality of mental equipment acquired 
in all these schools. 

In all our modern colleges are a few brave boys 
and girls working their way through with no system- 
atized method to reduce the labor to a minimum of 
time and efifort, but, often under the greatest diffi- 
culties and disadvantages, these brave students work 
on and pay their own way, getting a minimum for 
their labor and paying a maximum of profit on all 
they have to buy; and these self-supporting students 
average among the very highest, both in school and 
in after life. Had they a well organized system for 
supplying their own needs, the labor hours could be 
greatly decreased and the mental benefits of the 
labor vastly increased. 

A volume could be fidled with the heroic successes 
of those who have secured a full college and univer- 
sity education by all kinds of labor and under all 
sorts of adverse conditions; and the higher general 
average of usefulness and ability of this class of grad- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION loj^ 

nates over those who have their bills paid for them 
will be generally admitted; and scarcely any one will 
deny that, if a system of manual and mechanical 
education had been an essential and systematized 
portion of their course, the average of mental power 
would have been still higher. 

The almost universal consensus of opinion among 
all progressive educators and thinkers, the general 
trend of progress in education, is wholly towards the 
combining of hand and brain culture. The only por- 
tion of the problem we need to elucidate is how with 
the least possible financial difficulty to get the new 
system established where it will take its proper and 
needful place as the universal system, and thus do 
away forever with the present pagan methods, 
mainly adapted, as Spencer declares, "to establish 
an aristocracy of letters," wholly out of place in this 
democratic country, where all the best thought of 
the age is to advance democratic ideals and forever 
to do away with all the false and shoddy ideals of 
an efifete aristocracy. 

To carry out this full program is an effort of just 
enough difficulty to charm and arouse the enthusi- 
asm of progressive teachers and furnish a motive for 
heroic endeavor, we are sure; and that the completed 
result will make a great historic evolutionary epoch 
there can be no question. Nor can there be any 
question that the time is fully ripe for the step as an 



io8 INDUSTRIAL AND 

important factor in the surging storm of social re- 
form that is now sweeping the world and demand- 
ing attention from all patriotic minds. 

There has been enough accomplished in the past 
to prove that colleges and universities and other 
schools can be very successfully carried on, on an 
entirely self-supporting basis, as soon as competent, 
thorough-going effort is made to develop the system 
by those who have an enthusiasm for the grand pur- 
pose of making a full college and university course 
open and free to every boy and girl of the land, and 
the added enthusiasm to make it a course superior to 
anything ever enjoyed heretofore. 

As an eminent writer says, all material advance 
must be preceded by higher intellectual and spiritual 
concepts and ideals. So does the social and eco- 
nomic advance, now so needful in the interests of 
peace and prosperity, wait upon this advance in edu- 
cational matters. 

A school equipped with special facilities for best 
possible courses of both handicraft training and lit- 
erary and scientific accomplishments would have for 
main summer work and teaching the farm, with 
stock, dairy, gardens and all food-producing equip- 
ments possible, where the food of the school would 
be produced at lowest labor cost, and a surplus for 
sale at regular established retail prices. It would 
have a printing plant for instruction in the art of 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 109 

printing and for the production of its own books and 
papers, and a surplus to sell. 

It would have its own tannery to exemplify the 
trade and to turn the hides of the beef used into 
profitable product; and the raw hide, worth only 
three to five dollars, would be worth fifty to one hun- 
dred when made into shoes, harness, etc. The self- 
supporting school should make enough to supply its 
own needs, and a surplus to sell at market rates. A 
small weaving and knitting outfit would enable it to 
furnish most of its own clothing at one tenth the 
usual cost in labor, and a surplus to sell at usual 
prices, making a profit to pay balance of teachers' 
salaries and incidental expenses. 

The same with furniture, implements and fix- 
tures; and a great advantage to pupils in gaining 
their mechanical and industrial training will be the 
naturally greater interest in creating the things 
for their own personal use, rather than in making 
for the impersonal market. It will develop habits 
of care, nicety and thoroughness of detail which is 
of itself a moral lesson of vast importance. 

It will readily be seen that during the first years 
of such a school there will be difficulties and ob- 
stacles that will entirely vanish after the system is 
under way and the order established. At the be- 
ginning the pupils will not have acquired the 
esprit de corps of the work and will lack the facility 



no INDUSTRIAL AND 

of adapting their efforts to best advantage; but as 
soon as a few years of successful progress have 
passed and the system is learned by those in at- 
tendance, then it will be found that pupils who 
were of little industrial value the first year will be- 
come of much greater value the second, and each 
year of increasing value in the productive labors of 
the school. So the extra value of the labor of jun- 
iors and seniors will fully compensate for the les- 
ser value of freshmen and sophomores. 

It is surprising how much valuable material has 
been produced even by children of ten years of age, 
working only four hours per day, in the "Summer 
Garden Schools," "Children's Farms" and "Pingree 
Potato Patches." The same is true of the Primary 
Industrial and Truant Schools, where braiding rugs 
and straw and making things of use which convey 
lessons in handicraft and have the charm of novelty 
have been introduced. The work of pupils of the 
first years in school can be and has been made to 
bring some revenue; and when pupils have been in 
such schools a year or two, where the aim is to be 
as nearly self-sustaining as possible, they will each 
year become more productive workers ; and finally, 
when they enter an industrial college, will in the 
later years produce enough to make the full course 
nearly or quite free of outside cost. The fact that 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION in 

it will be a matter of growth is but the following 
out of evolutionary laws and proves its naturalness. 
If so be it should be best to give all stu- 
dents more thorough training in a chosen and 
congenial trade or industry, or to adapt the training 
to learned and special professions, and this should 
be found to require more years for most complete 
and perfect development, this is no detriment, as it 
would be infinitely better for the majority of the 
young to be directly and daily under the care of 
teachers during all these formative years. The 
superior practical value of industrial training with 
the immensely better moral and mental equipment, 
coupled with the fact that it is all obtained with 
no burden to parents or state, would make it a 
thousandfold more desirable than the shorter period 
for a memory-cramming, unpractical course, such 
as is now doled out to the unfortunate victims of a 
system of so-called education, with scarce a ves- 
tige of the "drawing out" of mental faculties in the 
whole course. 

Pupils who enter a self-supporting school at from 
fourteen to sixteen years of age cannot begin life in 
any possible manner so hopefully, so advantag- 
eously, as in a course that from its very nature 
draws out and develops thinking powers and applies 
the thinking to practical efforts of the hand. The 
whole effort of working a few hours per day to 



112 INDUSTRIAL AND 

create the needful food and clothing, aside from its 
healthful, sanitary value, is most perfectly adapted 
to develop the ability to reason from cause to efifect, 
and thus strengthen the logical powers now so al- 
most totally lacking in so many students who have 
had only the memory-cramming process of mental 
growth. These are the people whose only philoso- 
phical analysis of a sequence is the oft-used argu- 
ment, "it is because it is." 

"man more precious than fine gold." 
If the time ever comes, when highly educated and 
ennobled manhood is considered "more precious" 
and desirable than making money or things, then 
will men and women who labor in shop, factory, 
store or office, not be allowed to toil more than 
six hours and will then return to the elevating 
charms of home-building, and to the gentle art of 
gardening, and in daily touch with Nature, their 
hearts will become attuned to the Infinite Nature 
who gave the first "lessons in life" in a garden, in 
the only atmosphere in which man can come to his 
best estate. And no one has attained to his best 
until he has learned the joy of caring for living 
things. 

From the garden, the trees, the vines, the flowers, 
the fruits and the foods of our own growing come 
some of the formative influences that develop our 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 113 

best and for all this the school of "self-support" will 
best prepare. 

THE FIRST SELF-SUPPORTING INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 

"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in 
Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed 
. ... to dress it and to keep it." — Bible. 

If our civilization is to be freed from every destruc- 
tive taint, we must come to see that no aim or object 
of social desire is so great as the highest possible at- 
tainment and development of the average citizen- 
ship; and the present haste and waste of rushing the 
young into bread-winning life all undeveloped and 
immature, to become, like the machines they tend 
in factory and shop, mere automatons, is most harm- 
ful and ultimately destructive of national permanence. 

Booker Washington in a recent utterance questions 
whether the industrial school can be fully self-sup- 
porting and perform its highest function as an educa- 
tor, though admitting the high value of all the 
economic production possible. If Booker Washing- 
ton had had no other problem to solve, no work to 
do but to develop his school to the highest possible 
usefulness with self-support as the only means of 
existence, it is very certain, with his ability and per- 
severance, that his continual presence at the school 
would have been vastly useful and neither he nor we 



114 INDUSTRIAL AND 

dare say to what degree he would have gained 
success. 

But his arduous work of raising the needed means 
to enable the pupils to live and study and work, while 
creating a plant worth over half a million dollars, has 
in several ways been a national object lesson of un- 
speakable value. And vv^e do not believe there are 
many advocates of purely literary education who will 
dare deny that his pupils have had a far better prepa- 
ration for advanced positions in life, while doing 
all this work, than they would have had, had they 
gone with means to pay their way through and had 
no hand training at all. This lesson to the world, this 
proof of the increasing ability of the race that has 
come through his public labors, all together make a 
demonstration whose value has not been exceeded in 
importance by any phase of educational progress of 
this generation. It is a lesson of vastly greater impor- 
tance than all the seventy millions that have been 
given for the highest advantages to the few who can 
afford to climb to the top of the university ladder at 
this time, when all the world is trembling with anxiety 
to see if democracy is to be dethroned and cast from 
the pinnacle of hope where our fathers first planted 
its banner. 

The achievements of the school are a standing re- 
buke to the system so severely condemned by Spencer 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 115 

and so at variance with the teachings and philosophy 
of the inspired Froebel. 

But outside his school, Hampton, the George Junior 
Republic, and a very few others, there has been 
scarcely any study given to an approach to entire self- 
support. But, while the data are fragmentary, they 
are full of encouragement. A recent and most impor- 
tant and hopeful effort has been started by that widely 
known and progressive manufacturer, N. O. Nelson, 
of St. Louis, Missouri, at his great works at Le Claire, 
Illinois. After some years of careful study of the 
problem in all its phases, he has determined to begin 
the development of an absolutely self-supporting 
school in connection with his farm and large facto- 
ries. 

His wide, careful study of sociology, his energy 
and ability as a business builder, coupled with his 
enthusiasm for this great attempt, and his high ideals 
of the practical needs of such a progressive move in 
educational methods, will all assure a careful but 
steady growth of the institution till it may be the 
leader in the new and most important advance in 
education of the century. We dare believe it is a 
much more important step in educational history than 
the gifts of tens of millions, of the past few years, 
for the higher education of the few. 

At Glen Ellyn, a beautiful suburb of Chicago, Presi- 
dent Geo. McA. Miller has fortunately obtained a 



ii6 INDUSTRIAL AND 

large and picturesque site, with some costly buildings 
most admirably adapted to their use, and the co-opera- 
tion of several other schools, and some valuable in- 
dustries with which they are already successfully 
developing the first steps towards a university whose 
ultim^ate aim is to be self-sustaining from its own 
productive industries and to stand for all that is most 
progressive in educational methods. 

It is becoming almost an every-day affair to hear 
of some new attempt at founding a school of domestic 
science, a primary industrial school, or a departure 
along this general line of hand and brain culture, as 
the better method of preparation for the higher ideals 
of the new century. It is all only a portion of the 
great sociological move of the age and time towards 
the higher growth of democracy as a portion of the 
religious progress that tends towards Froebel's con- 
cept that whatever helps human unity is of itself 
religious and leads to highest human exaltation. 

It will be time enough later on to decide which best 
fulfills the functions of an educator, the school sup- 
ported wholly or partly by outside help, or the one 
that is wholly and entirely self-sustaining, with strong 
arguments and indications that a school plan can be 
worked out that shall be wholly independent of any 
outside revenue, and at the same time be the most per- 
fect and scientific system of education ever estab- 
lished, following Nature's own plan. And surely the 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 117 

wider possibilities of giving all a more complete train- 
ing will more than offset any trifling advantages, if 
there are any, of the school system that is supported 
by outside help. Until this system is found, a large 
portion of the young will be denied a chance for a 
full training and the state will suffer from imperfectly 
trained and developed citizens ; and from these un- 
trained, undeveloped citizens will always come a large 
percentage of criminals whose cost to the state will 
be a drag on the progress of the age. 

DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND SERVICE. 

One of the most perplexing labor problems in our 
modern civilization is that of domestic service and 
the social position of women who do any work with 
their hands. 

So long has the race held the ideals of serfdom 
and slavery, so superficial have been our concepts 
of an exalted democracy, so easily have we declined 
from the lofty aims of the noble founders of the re- 
public to the compromising ideal of a past pagan- 
ism, yet so widespread has been the sentiment of in- 
dependence and self-assertion as a portion of the 
"American spirit" that there is and always seems 
likely to be an "irrepressible conflict" between the 
maid of native blood and the mistress who desires 
a menial servitor. Very much of real suffering has 



ii8 INDUSTRIAL AND 

come to thousands of homemakers from want of 
efficient help in the home and in the care of children, 
while the latter have been, in thousands of cases, 
injured morally by contact with servers of low in- 
telligence and vicious tendencies. 

This whole problem, difficult and perplexing as 
it is, will be greatly helped toward a healthy solu- 
tion by the universally higher education for which 
we plead, by making the domestic science an art, 
as it really is, and giving to cultured skill the social 
regard to which it is entitled. 

Prejudice, fear and ignorance on both sides, stand 
in the way of an early solution and the only remedy 
seems to be an educational system that shall renew 
and exalt the true concept of the unity of all crea- 
tive labor and the appreciation of all culture in 
the home, a solution that cannot come hastily but 
waits upon the growth of the ideal that all skilled 
work is an art worthy the ambition of any degree 
of native talent. 

Some most suggestive hints of what may be ac- 
complished are given by the eminent Christian 
romancer in his thoughtful work entitled "Born to 
Serve," in which the contrast is sharply drawn 
between the elevating atmosphere of a home made 
comfortable and delightful by the management of 
a cultured, educated, efficient helper, instead of the 
vicious, ignorant servitor willing to accept the lower 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 119 

caste now established in such service; and he also 
strikingly shows the beneficial effects on the chil- 
dren of the home of association and care from a 
helper of real worth and cultured character, rather 
than one of superstitious ignorance and vulgar 
mind; so often now the only available type. 

A prominent educator truthfully declares that no 
one can permanently accept a lower caste without 
loss of self-respect and a lowering of the morals. 
Then how utterly unchristian, undemocratic and 
unpatriotic the brutal selfishness of the coterie of 
northern ladies who would curtail the school advan- 
tages of the young girls of their town, because for- 
sooth with an education, they would be unwilling 
to accept the lower caste of a (slave) servant. 

How widely in contrast to the wealthy southern 
lady of established social position, who in an able 
magazine article shows that all domestic progress 
must primarily come from the ambition of the work- 
ers for better social recognition for merit, is the 
rank inconsistency of people who cultivate a pride 
for helping to do away with chattel slavery while 
wishing to perpetuate a tyrannical domestic slavery 
and to inflict a perpetual degradation of ignorance 
and loss of moral uplift on their servers. Surely the 
essential spirit of slavery dies hard and Christian 
Democracy is but a name to conjure with. 

The rejection of a lower caste or menial position 



120 INDUSTRIAL AND 

is a promise of better things for the future, one of 
the many signs of the social awakening of the times, 
and a promise of hope to all who see that the path- 
way of progress is always and ever towards the 
higher and still higher evolution of the ideals of 
democracy, and the true motto of progress is and 
always must be "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." 
The concept of all that this means comes slowly, 
but the new education that is surely coming will 
accelerate it, and the different methods of co-oper- 
ative housekeeping, skilled specialists and the more 
scientific division of labor, will all tend to the solu- 
tion of this most trying of modern problems. 

The inspiring example of a lady of most aristo- 
cratic endowments and high position as an educa- 
tor, who went with the "working girls" to help them 
strive for better conditions and a higher life and 
encouraged her less endowed sisters by her pres- 
ence and sympathy, and the daughters of the 
wealthly in our metropolitan cities setting a new 
pace by their help and advice to the workers seek- 
ing to gain a better social place, both by united 
action and through a more careful study of the life 
problems in their special environment, is all along 
the line of a true solution of the problem, that can 
only best be solved by the universal complete edu- 
cation for which we plead. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 121 

SELF-SUPPORT THE BEST EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 

It is a most pertinent and important query 
whether the best educational accomplishment is 
compatible with the effort to make a school nearly 
or quite self-supporting from its own productive 
labor; whether it is best to turn all possible lessons 
in work towards producing a revenue for the living 
and general expenses of the school. The solution 
of the problem will largely depend on what is the 
ideal of the system. If its aim is to pass a given 
amount of text book examination, then we would 
say emphatically it is not the best system, but if it 
is to "draw out" the pupil's deepest interest in prep- 
aration for all phases of life, to learn while in school 
what his or her manner of life shall be, what are 
the personal adaptations, and to begin in school 
the work of life and to learn those things that will 
make the pupil a lifelong student, always alert to 
gain more of such information as shall not only in- 
crease efficiency but also broaden the intelligence, 
to arouse the love of knowing things and an interest 
in all work done and a pride in doing the best pos- 
sible, then we say by all means the work for self- 
use will quicken the interest and arouse ambition 
the best of any possible method. 

If, again, the object of school life is strongly to- 
wards the ideal of Colonel Parker, to develop the 



122 INDUSTRIAL AND 

mutualistic, altruistic and democratic qualities; or 
toward Froebel's ideals, to increase and enlarge the 
creative attribute and deepen the sense of mutual 
interdependence; or to increase the personal inter- 
est in all things made and planned in the school, 
when each article is liable to be sold and its price 
involved in the conscientious, thorough manner in 
which it is finished; when all these are the incen- 
tives for careful study and work, then surely the 
most natural and most scientific way is to engage 
the pupil's best effort and draw out his interest, and 
that means to develop his moral qualities, which is 
the highest aim possible. 

By no other means can there be such perfect 
sympathy established between pupil and teacher as 
when working together for mutual needs, and this 
gives the teacher the formative influence when 
helping to decide what the pupil's best adaptations 
are for a life work. Surely for the vast majority 
it will be better to work out the problem while 
gaining the means of living and paying for all with 
the labor of the hands from day to day. 

In the new social atmosphere that would be es- 
tablished by a universal complete educational sys- 
tem, there would naturally be two ideas established 
that would be dominant and aggressive; one, to 
develop man's beneficent creative attribute to the 
highest and best; the other, to replace the present 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 123 

abnormal and destructive selfishness with a con- 
structive mutualism and altruism, the only traits that 
really build in civilisation, and to modify or do away 
with the present insane rush and grab and greed so 
expressively and properly denominated by Carlyle as 
the "hellish scramble." Dare any deny that all the 
formative influences of a new and most radical educa- 
tional system will be required to restore a true 
democracy to its former high place in the thought of 
Americans. 

In the industrial system of today we find so much 
that is purely pagan in that it continually sacrifices 
men to things and Isaiah's concept is reversed. "Fine 
gold is esteemed more precious than man," and men 
have been ruthlessly destroyed to produce cheapest 
things, while society has been dumb over the pagan 
cruelty of putting the young into factory slavery, to 
do continually one monotonous thing with all its 
dwarfing, soul and mind benumbing effect. Even 
in professional life this abnormal subdivision of labor 
and specialization of study and practice of what may 
be hoped to pay best in a material sense has induced 
men of high mental culture to narrow their intellect 
tual power by confining their thought to one line, 
instead of to the wider, broader, better development 
of many things and many topics of study, all of which 
will be modified by the educational system of self- 



124 INDUSTRIAL AND 

support, which will necessarily lead to some knowledge 
of many trades and to the science of allied things. 

The whole scientific and Christian ideal would be 
to, at all times and in all ways, keep the main study 
and work, from the shop to the laboratory, the 
making of completely developed men and women, 
and this should be the chief concern of all art, study, 
business or religion. To draw out and magnify 
human talents of highest altruistic use is and should 
be the aim of all teaching. 

HAND TRAINING AIDS MENTAL DEVELOPMENT. 

A veteran educator in urging this ideal of hand 
training in connection with mental culture, and 
making it free and universal, declared that he did it 
not for material reasons mainly, but because it rep- 
resented moral and spiritual advance. 

Another prominent educator with ripe experience 
in manual training declares his observation to es- 
tablish the fact that pupils can work four hours per 
day at industrial pursuits and make better progress 
along purely literary lines during the school period 
than with no industrial training; and he gives his 
unqualified endorsement to the proposition that a 
course of training in mechanics and industry with 
the academic will afford a vastly superior mental 
equipment for any practical or professional life. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 125 

We know of two very able university educators 
whose rule is to work four hours per day in garden 
or shop, with most beneficial results, and of a whole- 
sale merchant whose shop and tools are his con- 
stant source of rest and recreation. 

We are sure that if a system of Free Universal 
Industrial Colleges were to be organized, whose 
whole cost of maintenance was to be drawn from 
the taxation of the country, it would still be the 
cheapest and best method for preventing crime, and 
that it would so increase the wealth-producing 
power of the citizens as to be immensely profitable 
to the state. 

It would not be so radical a step as was the es- 
tablishment of the common school in the early 
history of this nation, when it seemed by the pre- 
established custom a great wrong to tax one man 
to educate another man's child. To decree that 
every child should be kept in school till the age of 
legal responsibility and never allowed to become a 
citizen until he is well trained in handicraft and 
has a college diploma for a completed course of gen- 
eral study, would, we are sure, like the establish- 
ment of the common school, mark an epoch in the 
history of our country. The age demands and will 
sustain the movement. 

In the early history of one of our most popular 
colleges, teachers and pupils worked together full 



126 INDUSTRIAL AND 

half time at the heavy work of clearing, building 
and raising their own crops, and while doing all 
this the able president declared they made as good 
progress along literary lines as has ever been done 
since with no work at all; and the early students 
had a higher average of all-round ability than later 
ones. Similar records have been partially made by 
many pioneer colleges. 

In almost all our colleges there is a larger class 
wishing for the meager chance of self-support than 
the opportunities offer. If the present colleges 
would or could use a portion of their endowment 
funds, now locked up to draw interest, to build an 
equipment for productive labor, it would be a de- 
cidedly better use of money and open a wider door 
of usefulness to many a struggling college. To be 
most perfectly adapted to the ideal of a scientific 
system every college and university should be fully 
equipped for productive labor and a certain amount 
of labor and hand training be made a necessary por- 
tion of every course for every pupil, thus prevent- 
ing any possibility of a labor caste tainting its 
moral atmosphere; and only when this has become 
universal in our colleges, seminaries and universities 
can we be said to be free from the moral taint so 
heartily condemned by the philosophical Spencer and 
accepted by so wide a circle of progressive minds, 
and the era of a perfected educational system, 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 127 

dreamed of as only possible in a far distant future by 
the prophet Froebel, be begun. 

Then only may we hope to have teachers, preach- 
ers, missionaries and professionals who shall not 
scatter pagan social standards to demoralize our 
home society and injure our influence among the be- 
nighted islands of the sea or in the dark continents 
of the earth. 

One of our most able educators speaks of the al- 
most mysterious mental power gained by the totally 
uneducated (according to common parlance) who 
have learned several mechanical trades, or perhaps 
have worked in younger years at several trades long 
enough to have acquired their essential principles 
with some degree of hand skill, and through this 
have become men of well known "all round ability." 

This cultivation of "all-round ability" was the spe- 
cial characteristic of early New England people, 
who, in the home manufacture of everything used on 
the place, had a very wide education in mechanical 
principles and gained much skill in a varied handi- 
craft ; and it developed a mental equipment of exceed- 
ingly high average power, not only in practical mat- 
ters, but also in the higher flights of metaphysical, 
spiritual and scientific deductions, Wendell Phillips 
declared the highest the world has ever seen. 

Its efifect on national character can be seen among 
people from Northern Europe, those who have for 



128 INDUSTRIAL AND 

some centuries been tenants on land belonging to 
others, having no special inducement to repair 
homes and keep things in order, have lost the "all- 
round ability," but which is soon redeveloped in 
pioneering in this country; while the people from the 
countries where they own their own homes and have 
made and repaired their furniture, implements and 
clothing have a far superior adaptation to all-round 
utilities and a higher average mental and moral equip- 
ment. 

The mind-dwarfing efYect, too, is easily seen 
among those who have for some generations been 
confined to factory life, where they have been taught 
to tend some one machine and to do one monoton- 
ous thing, which reduces the "all-round" talent to a 
minimum; and from this class there but rarely 
springs a genius. 

In the training of woman heretofore it has been 
almost universal to neglect totally all teaching of 
mechanical principles or any handicraft skill, while 
it is certain that she peculiarly needs the ability to 
reason from cause to effect which the study and prac- 
tice of mechanics is so well adapted to impart. 

Froebel would have girls have the same plays as 
boys till twelve or fourteen years of age, and have 
them trained along handicraft lines all through their 
whole educational course; and there can be no ques- 
tion of its high mental and moral benefit. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 129 

In a few progressive schools manual training, cab- 
inet work and even light forging have been given the 
young ladies and it has been done with enthusiasm 
ancl great benefit. Gardening and horticulture 
should be a requirement for every young lady and no 
diploma given without proficiency along some line 
of industrial education. This would be a most im- 
portant step in the development'of a higher average 
citizenship. 

The philosophy of universal hand culture as an 
important portion of all education and its bearing on 
the permanence of national life is too well known 
and acknowledged to need any argument among 
practical people. It will not be questioned except 
by those who have been perverted by a false system, 
and most of these will admit the value of it. 

The extreme but profound philosophy of Froebel 
has won its way to the minds of almost all thor- 
oughly progressive teachers and thinkers; and we 
cannot more radically put the value and essential 
necessity of hand culture as a fundamental portion of 
an education from the kindergarten through the uni- 
versity. His philosophy only seems extreme when 
brought into contrast with a system confessedly 
tainted and corrupted, utterly unworthy an age whose 
ideals are to make a sovereign of every citizen and to 
prevent any slavish class from being developed in 
society. 



130 INDUSTRIAL AND 

THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 

''When all the elements of national life work to- 
gether in harmony for progress, then material pros- 
perity and moral advance are rapid and sure, but zvhen 
divisions and discord hetzveen zvarring classes of citi- 
zens come in to absorb mental effort, then national 
decadence and death sets in and zi'hen carried one 
step too far, then reform and recovery is impossible." 
— Henry George. 

These startlin,^ words of the humane and able stu- 
dent of all social law were penned nearly half a cen- 
tury since, when strife and divisions between classes 
were not half as portentous as today. 

This philosophy of the able economist is but putting 
the essential teachings of the Carpenter of Nazareth 
into economic phrase. He declared that "The meek 
(the altruistic) shall inherit the earth," and that "the 
strong shall bear the burdens of the zveak," which is 
only another way of saying that all shall work to- 
gether for common progress or common good and by 
that means they shall "inherit the earth." And all 
this is but the unchanging law of democratic econo- 
mics, as potent and invariable as the law of gravita- 
tion. Those who for selfish ends foment class divi- 
sions and strife, are more surely and rapidly under- 
mining the foundations of the Republic than the mad- 
dest anarchists. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 131 

When old Rome was climbing to a world suprem- 
acy, her peasantry owned their own land and lived in 
their own homes and their patriotism made them in- 
vincible, but when class divisions and unjust laws had 
taken their homes and lands and the drift was to the 
cities and to slavery, all patriotic ambition was de- 
stroyed and the nation was ready for the ruthless 
destroyer. 

So today the appeal "hack to the land" is but the 
plea to save our Republic already nearing the dan- 
ger line through the rush to the cities and the con- 
sequent clash of classes and division of interests. 

Then let us speed the plans to get the people back 
to the land and make it charming by all that art and 
science can teach of the most progressive agricul- 
ture that is always the most attractive of profes- 
sions and full of the highest pleasures of earth. And 
why should not the "Science of Society" and all the 
essential laws of human development and the meth- 
ods for accelerating the evolution to higher and yet 
higher degrees of democracy be taught in all our 
schools, and all that can be learned of proper, equi- 
table and wasteless distribution of created wealth 
be as carefully inculcated as are the ideals of perfect 
production or selfish accumulation. 

AN IRRIGATION CITY FOR SURPLUS LABOR. 

"The common people are the class most to he consid- 



132 INDUSTRIAL AND 

ered in the structure of civilization." — Walter H. 
Page. 

How may the dangerous divisions and strife be- 
tween warring classes be so hopefully treated as by 
an effort to build an "Irrigation City" with its ''In- 
dustrial Schools and Colleges," its gardens and 
farms, shops and factories, where all surplus labor 
can become more than self-supporting, and let cap- 
ital and labor shake hands over a project that will 
bring peace and unity and co-operation between the 
now clashing, warring interests so dangerous to our 
public welfare even as the grand old hero Oberlin 
brought peace, prosperity and a high social order 
to the ignorant robber bands of the Pyrenees. 

From '93 to '97 our Commissioner of Labor de- 
clared there were from one to three million workers 
all the time out of their usual employment. The 
suffering and death resulting would be equal to quite 
a severe war. 

Had this vast labor power been marshaled for a 
campaign of construction, as suggested by the 
practical Secretary of the Irrigation League, and it 
could have been done much more easily than were 
the armies of destruction from '61 to '65, it would 
have built several cities like Chicago, on the irrigated 
land, with farms and appliances to have made the 
inhabitants vastly more than self-supporting and 
would have added several billions to the taxable 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 133 

permanent wealth of the nation. It would have cre- 
ated a demand for all manufactured goods that 
would have kept capital employed and many of the 
idle shops and factories busy and would have created 
a home market for products, a thousand times more 
to be desired than any foreign market that must be 
sought after often at cost of war. 

Shall we allow this monumental folly and wicked 
waste to continue, or shall the Free Industrial 
School and the Constructive Army be set at work to 
show the world a new example, the most striking 
and helpful of all the centuries? 

"Democracy means constant social growth." — W. 
H. Page. 

THE WORLD-WIDE FOLLY. 

"Peace hath her victories." — Milton. 

From a profound student of social problems, who 
with a small party has made the circle of the globe, 
we get the following : "Everyzvhere we went we were 
impressed with this thought, IF ONLY all the nations 
of the earth would give the same earnest study and 
energy to teaching their people how to live, how to 
develop their natural resources, and their own best 
talents, that they now give to zuar and the prepara- 
tion for zvar, hozv soon the zvorld zvotdd he encircled 
by a real millennial epoch of peace and abundant 



134 INDUSTRIAL AND 

prosperity." Soon might come that dream of poets 
and prophets, the federation of the whole world in a 
brotherhood of unity, where the ambition should be 
for highest attainments in usefulness, not in the grim 
powers of destruction. IVJiy not begin it noivf 

WHAT WASTED LABOR POWER COULD DO. 

"Great zifaste is both zvicked mid unscientific." — 
Parsons. 

Of all the illogical wastes of our "Insane Civiliza- 
tion" perhaps the worst and most colossal and least 
realized is that of the waste of labor power when 
idle. 

A few years ago the great city of Chicago was 
burned to the ground and something like two hun- 
dred million dollars worth of buildings destroyed 
and in three or four years it was all replaced and 
twice as much more created by the surplus labor 
power of the country, while all other productive in- 
dustry went on unchecked, indeed rather stimu- 
lated and increased Idy the active demand for prod- 
ucts from the well paid labor, whose increased pur- 
chasing power was felt in every hamlet in the land. 

More recently an army of approximately a hun- 
dred thousand men built all the wonderful "Fair 
City" at St. Louis, which was soon torn down and 
gave no increase to the taxable wealth of the nation. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 135 

THE ARMY OF DISCHARGED LABOR. 

"A hungry, desperate man is of all animals the 
most dangerous/' 

Recently we read in the daily press that an army 
of nearly or quite seventy-five thousand men has 
been discharged by the railroads and other large in- 
dustries, and as many more last autumn, thus cutting 
them off from any chance to earn an honest living 
and v^asting a great share of their creative labor 
power beside making them a danger to society from 
the very desperateness of their situation. 

The national treasury has already a fund of over 
twenty-seven millions in hand with which to build 
great irrigation works, thus opening a most profit- 
able and permanent way of using the labor power 
now being wasted in idleness, and if it is used to 
build an irrigation city of homes and farms it will re- 
main a permanent addition to the taxable wealth of 
the nation. If this army of idle labor, now irritated 
and antagonistic, is left to suffer, it may very prob- 
ably destroy vastly more in red riot and revolution 
than it can replace in many more years of construc- 
tive labor. 

A few years ago our government without a tithe 
of this sum on hand or "in sight" called together the 
largest army the world had ever seen and taught 
them the art of destroying men and property and in 



136 INDUSTRIAL AND 

a few years they destroyed one or two billions of 
the accumulated wealth of the country. If then our 
government would at once begin to use this sum now 
in the Treasury to employ this labor to create some 
permanent wealth, how much more sane and reason- 
able than to risk its waste and the danger it will be 
to the peace of the country. 

Truly to build such an irrigation city we would 
require many men to teach the people skilled gar- 
dening and intensive farming; so did the army need 
thousands of drill masters to teach the art of de- 
stroying property and men. We may well ask what 
is all our skill and science, our schools, colleges, 
churches and universities for if not to produce a civ- 
ilization or social order that shall open the doors of 
natural opportunity and teach people how to use the 
bounties of nature and their own powers to create 
their own living, and thus at the same time create a 
"balance wheel" for the labor market and use in a 
profitable manner the surplus labor not now needed 
in present production for the market? We call on 
our educators and captains of industry for an an- 
swer. 

Valuable as has been the lesson taught by the 
great Fair, of the world's progress in mechanic art, 
we are profoundly impressed with the conviction 
that the world advancement that could be made by 
organizing, educating and employing the army of 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 157 

discharged labor to build their own city of homes 
and to create their own self-supporting industries, 
would be a thousand fold more important, and would 
help forward the evolution of a higher democratic 
ideal more than all the great Fairs yet held. In so 
far as man himself is above and superior to the ma- 
chines he makes, even so far is the development of 
social progress that shall eliminate the waste of 
men, above that of the development of progress in 
purely mechanical achievements. 

One of the most important items in mechanical 
progress has been to prevent waste in power and 
material. So the highest achievements in a demo- 
cratic civilization shall be to save all the pitiful 
waste of men that has been the bane of all undemo- 
cratic civilizations, and we now have reached the 
time when this great ideal should have its due study 
and make its first exhibition to the waiting world. 

"While another man has no land, my title to mine 
is vitiated." — Emerson. 

THE REMEDY FOR CHILD SLAVERY. 

"No nation can afford to neglect its children." — 
Horace Mann. 

The words "Child Slavery" bring an intuitive hor- 
ror to every sensitive mind, and we are sure justly 
so, but as all healthy growth is step by step and not 



138 INDUSTRIAL AND 

from bad to best at once, so we think the working of 
children in our factories may yet be made a means 
of grace to the poor children of the mountains, by 
giving them training in gardens and schools which 
they could not have but for the chance to earn some 
of its cost. 

If the children were to be divided into shifts to 
work a few hours and then study or work in the 
gardens and shops and thus do what they can with- 
out abuse of their growing powers, it would mitigate 
the crying evil and gradually open the way to the 
time when no child shall be allowed to labor for 
wages till of mature age. 

In accord with the growing spirit of the age, the 
adults should also be divided into shifts and not al- 
lowed to work in the air of any factory or shop over 
eight hours at a time. They should then be trained in 
gardening, mechanics and those arts that will make 
them self-reliant, self-respecting, self-supporting 
people, who alone are fitted to be the ruling citizens 
of a Republic. The fact is already well established 
that intelligent labor is always of more value than 
untrained, even in tending the almost automatic ma- 
chinery of modern production. 

Only in some such way as this can a state escape 
execration for allowing its children to be destroyed 
by thousands to make profits for soulless corpora- 
tions. If the poor children of the mountains can 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 139 

earn a chance for gaining a wider outlook, and a 
training for an independent and intelligent life by 
giving a portion of their time to the slavish labor 
and wages of the factory system, it may be one sten 
In advance; but to give their whole time as now to 
tfie soul and body destroying factory slavery is a 
paganism, not excelled in atrocity by any story of all 
the past slaveries in the world's cruel history. 

If all the states of our country would but heed the 
words of that able son of the South who says 
"the children of a state are its most valuable of un- 
developed resources and let no greed of gain chain 
them to a destructive slavery." 

nervous americans. 
"americanitis." 

"A people %vho have become physically degenerate, 
will also be morally and mentally decadent." 

No student of social progress or decline can learn 
of the appalling increase in nervous diseases and the 
constantly increasing number of nervous wrecks 
among the American people, with all the attendant 
suffering and loss of mental power, without the most 
pessimistic forebodings for the future. And it is 
practically certain that a great share of it comes 
from our unnatural, unscientific school system, with 
its high pressure and long continued nerve strain 



140 INDUSTRIAL AND 

and almost total neglect of physical exercise and 
muscle development; while with a proper school 
system the effect would be to correct any tendency 
towards nerve weakness from other causes and to 
produce robust bodies with ample strength of nerve 
and mental power for the most strenuous of life's 
activities. 

Instead of weakening strong children, a proper 
educational system should strengthen weak chil- 
dren. The weak and nervous child should come 
from its school period with its nerve strength built 
up instead of enervated and in so many cases entirely 
destroyed. 

The day for the suggestion that any class of pupils 
cannot stand the strain of a course of study in school, 
college, or university has gone by, and the day is 
dawning when the weak and nervous girl or boy will 
be sent to college or university for the express pur- 
pose of building up a robust body, and a vigorous en- 
during nerve ponder, while attaining to the very 
broadest and most complete educational course pos- 
sible to gain from an institution of learning. 

"Any study that is not recreative to a groiving child 
is always injurious." — Dr. Dewey. 

"I would rather have illiterates for citizens than 
nerve-zvrecks." — Nelson. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 141 

THE educator's RESPONSIBILITY. 

"The mute appeal of neglected children is to you 
the voice of God." — W. A. Page. 

It is a most severe reflection on our associated 
educators, but we find many teachers who admit that 
no adequate attempt has yet been made to strengthen 
the weaker children, or guard against injury to ner- 
vous ones. In the name of our country's future, in 
the name of hundreds of children killed and the thou- 
sands injured and in the name of the hosts of adult 
sufferers, we call upon and beg of our National Edu- 
cational Association that this appalling condition be 
given their most profound and serious consideration. 
The thought of the world is too much aroused, the im- 
portance of the case is too great to be pushed aside 
with neglect any longer. 

"To talk about education in a democratic country 
as less than the free education for every child is a 
mockery." — W. H. Page. 

"For unto zvhom much is given, of him shall be 
much required." — Bible. 

If it is approximately or remotely correct to 
charge that our school system is a menace to the 
health and nerves of the nation's children_, a cause 
of death to many and an irreparable injury to more 
and a danger to all, then it is a national disgrace and 
danger, for the children of today are the people of 



142 INDUSTRIAL AND 

the nation's defense of tomorrow. And a charge of 
injury where there should be great bodily as well as 
mental benefit, is of so startling importance as imper- 
atively to demand immediate attention from all who 
have the educational interests of the nation in their 
hands. They, of all others, should take immediate 
measures to repel the serious charge of a murderous 
system or take the most heroic steps to change the 
methods so as to avoid all possibility of doing so se- 
rious a wrong to their sacred trust. 

This nation's life has cost too much and the hopes 
of the world are too intensely centered in our wel- 
fare to' allow any possible avoidable injury to come 
to the rising generation of those who must assume 
the tremendous responsibility of carrying forward 
the ideals of a "Triumphant Democracy." 

"The proper question at examination should not he, 
what have yon learned from text hooks, hut zvhat 
have you become?" For what activities are you pre- 
pared? 

MORE FOR SCHOOLS AND LESS FOR WAR. 

"The growth of the ivar spirit is a sure sign of 
moral decadence.^' 

The Japanese war proved beyond question that the 
art of destruction has made even greater progress 
than the art of invulnerability in making battleships, 
invincible as they have seemed. We now know that 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 143 

the great steel armoured ships, costing so many mil- 
lions, can be destroyed like an egg shell by the fear- 
ful engines of destruction modern science has enabled 
us to perfect. There is every reason to believe this 
will continue to be more and more so, and that in 
the near future it will be impossible to make a ship, 
if it is not already so, that will not be at the mercy 
of an alert and active foe and liable to be shattered 
and sunk in a moment at any time. 

In view, then, of all this, and in view of the worse 
and more destructive, demoralizing effect of culti- 
vating the war spirit among our people — always a 
degrading influence — how unspeakably foolish and 
wicked to squander millions of wealth on battleships 
when so many of our poor people are held in the un- 
speakable thraldom of illiteracy, the worst slavery 
the mind can conceive. 

Does any sane mind for one moment believe there 
could be a particle of danger, if this Republic should 
at once announce to the world that we zvill have no 
more war, that from now on we will disarm and scat- 
ter our silly army and navy and hereafter depend on 
the world's court of arbitration to settle all our con- 
troversies, if so be we ever have any to settle? In- 
stead of all this worse than wasted effort let us an- 
nounce to the world that we will at once begin to 
enlarge our schools and colleges, so that every child 
and adult too who wishes it shall not only be taught 



144 INDUSTRIAL AND 

to read and write, but shall also have a complete 
training of hands and head and heart in all that will 
make him the highest type of citizen the world has 
ever seen in both intelligence and efficiency as a 
wealth producer and cultured in all high ideals of 
esthetic living. 

If we should announce to the world that instead 
of a portion of our people being taught the arts of 
destruction, they shall all be taught more fully than 
ever before heard of in the annals of the world's his- 
tory, in the sciences of agriculture and mechanic 
arts, also that all our children during the formative 
period of their youth shall be kept under the mold- 
ing influence of teachers, with the end and aim al- 
ways in view of making each and every one of them 
useful citizens of the highest type possible to develop 
from their given talents, does any sane mind doubt 
that such a step would at once set a new pace for the 
world's progress and be the actual means of bringing 
in that era, so dimly foreseen by the ancient seers, 
when wars shall be no more? 

A little more than a century ago we set the world 
an example of forming a government with a dem- 
ocratic constitution and that first radical step has 
been followed more or less closely by nearly one 
hundred countries who now have a constitutional 
government. 

May we not then hope that every patriot heart 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 145 

will join our cry and ask that we shall have a still 
more inclusive demand than our motto and let it be : 
"More for schools and naught for war." 

PLAUSIBLE BUT PERNICIOUS SENTIMENTS. 

In one of the ablest of recent books written by a col- 
ored man pleading for the education and betterment of 
his unfortunate race we find the following sentiments 
expressed. He says, "Teach the thinkers to think and 
the zvorkers to zvork;" followed by the statement that 
"It is silly to make a scholar a blacksmith, but sillier 
still to make a blacksmith a scholar." 

Innocent as these plausible sentences look to the 
casual reader, we deem them full of the subtlest poison 
to his own struggling race and subversive of all demo- 
cratic progress to any race or people. This ideal of 
"teaching the thinkers to think" and not to work and 
the "workers to work" and not to think for their own 
protection, if carried to its conclusion would again 
naturally and inevitably lead to just such a state of 
society as prepared the way for the ruin of the repub- 
lics of old Greece and Rome, where a small coterie of 
well-educated men "taught to think" but not to work 
nor to respect the workers, thought out ways to re- 
duce the "workers who had been taught to work" to 
the most abject and pitiful poverty and slavery that 
has ever disgraced humanity, and these "thinkers" be- 



146 INDUSTRIAL AND 

came the most arrogant tyrants and profligates in all 
the world's sad history and this baneful sentiment has 
always and always will to the end of time tend to 
bring men to this condition if carried to its culmina- 
tion. 

ARISTOCRATIC, TYRANNICAL, LITERARY MEN, 

"The faults and -decs of our philosophy and litera- 
ture are attributable to the enervated habits of our 
literary classes." — Emerson. 

There is no aristocracy more arrogant or more 
tyrannical than men of letters when their education 
has been of the kind so caustically described by Her- 
bert Spencer as "not adapted to fit for complete living 
and usefulness but to form a class of literary aristo- 
cracy" dififerent and separate from the class of work- 
ers. No formula could be more effective than this of 
the man who pleads so eloquently for the good of 
"Black folk souls" to degrade the "thinkers" to a 
state of uselessness, crime and folly and the "work- 
ers" to abject and hopeless slavery. 

How widely in contrast is the suggestive epigram 
of the broadguage author of "The Religion of Demo- 
cracy" who so tersely says "The glory of thinking is 
in work and the dignity of work is in thinking." 

Who would dare suggest the "silliness" of develop- 
ing a generation of such "learned blacksmiths" as 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 147 

Elihu Burritt, who literally "stood before Kings" be- 
cause of his great ability, which came from the very 
mixture of brawn and brain that is the only true 
ideal of the high culture for which we so earnestly 
plead. If our blacksmiths, carpenters, farmers and 
all workers could thus be "taught to think and to 
work," to know of the science of society and the 
philosophy of political economy, for their own pro- 
tection, how much less of real slavery we would have 
to curse both classes, those who rule to ruin and those 
who are ruined by the ruling. 

THE DEMOCRATIC FORMULA. 

A thousand times would we reiterate the formula 
"Let the Thinkers he taught to think, and to WORK, 
and to respect all zvho work zvith skill, and let all the 
Workers be taught to THINK for their ozun protec- 
tion." Let every blacksmith, farmer and worker have 
a high m.ental development, let him know of all sci- 
ences allied to his work, and above all, let him know 
of social science and the laws and philosophy of 
democratic political economy and understand all the 
intricate schemes of the "thinkers who have been 
taught to think," and not to work, for robbing and 
enslaving with invisible chains those whose work pro- 
duces all the wealth for the "thinkers." 

Nor must we go back to old Greece or Rome for 
illustrations of the baneful effects of this pernicious 



148 INDUSTRIAL AND 

formula of the miseducated, misguided, mistaken man, 
who has been led to suppose that the present civiliza- 
tion is the ideal for the Anglo-Saxon race, or that the 
conventional system of education is in any degree a 
scientific one or adapted to democratic progress or 
even for the highest development of a true order of 
scholarship. 

THE ENGLISH "tHINKERS" ENSLAVING FORMULA. 

We need but to go to our mother country, Eng- 
land, or to observe the present conditions and ten- 
dencies in all the Anglo-Saxon civilization to see the 
pernicious workings of this false formula. 

In England the "thinkers, who have been taught 
to think," for their own good only, have thought out 
a formula of finance that has diverted an almost un- 
thinkable amount of unearned wealth into the coffers 
of a few great bankers who have thereby been made 
the financial autocrats of the whole world and has 
put into their hands the interest-bearing bonds of 
nearly every nation on earth as well as those of nearly 
every railroad in the world, and within a given time, 
according to reliable statistics, has taken from the 
United States over five billions' zvorth of gold and 
silver and other labor products for which we have re- 
ceived no tangible returns. It has all been a gratui- 
tous tribute to their system. 

Their formula was, "Base all money on gold and 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 149 

for every dollar of gold obtained, issue ten dollars or 
more of interest-hearing credits and the world shall 
pay us untold tribute." And in the vast extension of 
this plan more unearned weaUh has been accumulated 
than was ever before put into the hands of any one 
human agency. The pathetic side of it all is that 
it has come from the unpaid toil of millions of those 
"workers who have been taught to work but not to 
think for their own protection." This system is still 
at work and the world's workers are unaware of its 
subtle power to rob and enslave. 

This fomula "ten dollars of organised credit, bear- 
ing interest, for every dollar of gold" and its vast 
enlargement until in many cases there have been many 
times ten times the credit bearing interest for every 
one dollar of gold in hand, is the height of the art of 
robbery and enislavement ye^ attained by English 
"thinkers who have been taught to think and not to 
work" for what they want. 

The profligate character of these arrogant English 
"thinkers" who have enslaved the world is told by 
the shameful revelations of Editor Stead. It could 
hardly be worse and the abject conditions to which 
they have reduced the "workers" is told by the long, 
cruel history of Ireland and General Booth's "In 
Darkest Africa" and its "Submerged Tenth." Worse, 
if possible, than the pitiful slavery of old Rome. 



150 INDUSTRIAL AND 

America's formula, "watered stocks." 

But in America our "thinkers" have attained to a 
yet higher degree in the consummate art of robbery 
and enslavement of the "workers." "Watering stocks," 
begun in a small way less than a generation ago by the 
doughty dry land commodore, whose patriotism and 
democracy were tersely epitomized in the oft-quoted 
phrase "Damn the public" has become like a Car of 
Juggernaut and we now have a veritable king of 
diluted securities whose issuance of beautifully litho- 
graphed certificates of fictitious imitation investments 
has been as the letting out of many waters and thou- 
sands have been overwhelmed by the flood. Recently 
his associates boasted that at one sitting they had suc- 
cessfully issued thirty-six millions of this fictitious 
capital on which labor must pay dividends. 

And this ethereal type of "vested interests" has all 
the legal power to draw "dividends" from labor's 
products that the most solid forms of "accumulated 
capital" have, and so rapid is the increase of this form 
of enslavement that it will be but a short time till the 
total thraldom of our "workers" will be consum- 
mated. 

Teaching "thinkers to think," and not to work, and 
teaching "workers to work," and not to think, for 
their own protection, has been the wrong method in 
all the past and it is what we most heartily condemn 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 151 

in the present system of education. It at once con- 
stitutes two classes of society with divergent, clashing 
interests, that, as Henry George says, will only and 
can only result in social disintegration and national 
decadence and death. 

CANNIBALISTIC CONCEPTS CONTINUED. 

All of these systems of enslavement of the "work- 
ers" whose toil produces the wealth of the world, is 
but a continuation and variation of the old cannibal- 
istic concept that the strong and smart man shall eat 
or prey upon the weak and simple man, and these re- 
fined methods are in this realm what the "Auto," the 
"Wireless Telegraphy," and the "Dirigible Flying 
Machine" are in the realm of mechanics, the highest 
achievements now conceivable to our imaginations. 

Surely our misleading pleader for his enslaved race 
will need the long life of the Patriarchs and the as- 
siduity of an Apostle, to undo the harm his pernicious 
formula may have done to the young of his race who 
will no doubt look to him as an "Oracle" trained in 
the best institutions (so called) of learning of the 
dominant race. 

But thank God there is a rising tide of "thinkers" 
who have seen the folly of going back to pagan social 
standards and have a high concept of man as a creator, 
as well as a thinker. 

The days of the old system are numbered and it is 



152 INDUSTRIAL AND 

now only a question of how soon the system of uni- 
versal hand culture can be established, and with it to 
be re-established the true Christian ideal of the God- 
like attribute of creative labor as an expression of 
man's highest mental and spiritual development. 

ESSENTIALS OF AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 

What then are the essentials of an educational sys- 
tem for an advancing Christian and democratic civili- 
zation and suited to the aims of a twentieth century 
progress and the hope of a permanent national life? 

We answer: Well equipped plants, with abundant 
land for gardens, hothouses, dairies, etc., and the neces- 
sary appliances for carrying on the work ; shops of all 
kinds furnished with necessary materials, that the 
labor of students may be used to advantage ; and 
teachers who will work with pupils ; all this added to 
the usual outfit for an academic education, and the 
equipment is complete. This for a general outline. 

In detail, a school of this sort should be estab- 
lished in every county, and such forms of manufac- 
turing and agriculture undertaken as are adapted to 
the locality. Eventually every college and university 
a center for industrial activity, as well as mental 
training. 

Let but the firm determination come to parents and 
school authorities alike that this killing, high pressure 
nerve strain shall cease, and at once; this memory 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 153 

cramming from text books be modified by more gen- 
eral and practical instruction, and the school day be 
cut squarely in two; and it be decreed that hereafter 
only half of the day's time shall be given to text book 
study; and in a hundred different districts will the 
way open to the better method of handicraft training, 
and the study and application of mechanical princi- 
ples. 

We have this idea of handiwork in the kindergar- 
ten; later we find it in the manual training that is 
being introduced into our schools so rapidly and 
successfully. Let us carry this idea still further, and 
when the boys and girls are old enough to begin wage 
earning and feel the necessity of leaving school that 
they may add somewhat to the revenue of the family, 
or at least supply their own needs, let us have a 
universal system of free, self-supporting industrial 
schools, thoroughly equipped by the state, where with- 
out further cost to state or parents, they may cultivate 
the threefold nature, hand, head and heart, to its 
highest capacity. 



154 INDUSTRIAL AND 

SUMMARY. 

If then an essential difference between pagan and 
Christian civiHzations is in their widely varying con- 
cepts in regard to the nobility of labor; 

If the Anglo-Saxon civilization is still tainted with 
the pagan idea of the disgrace of labor; 

If hand training is of such immense value as the 
complement of mental culture and together they tend 
to form a high moral character ; 

If our present school system is based upon pagan 
ideals and tends to produce a "labor caste ;" 

If our schools do not fit for "complete living," and 
our graduates must "unlearn in practical life much 
that they learn in schools ;" 

If the influence of teachers will be greatly increased 
when they work with their pupils in garden and shop ; 

If it will be an advantage in the forming of char- 
acter for pupils to remain longer under the guidance 
of teachers ; 

If the children of the slums and the poor and 
ignorant everywhere can be elevated in their three- 
fold nature ; 

If the children of the profligate rich can be changed 
into useful members of society; 

If a larger proportion of feeble-minded and unpre- 
cocious children can be developed to a greater degree 
of usefulness through the training of the physical; 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 155 

If Industrial Training be the most efficient means 
for the prevention of crime; 

If creative labor will prevent immorality ; 

If it be true that pupils have greater pleasure and 
incentive in working to supply their own needs than 
in working without special aim ; 

If skilled hands and cultured brains give the highest 
happiness ; 

If our present school system does not teach the 
"worker to think" and the "thinker to work;" 

And if the strength of the whole must be judged 
by the strength of the weakest part, and this will tend 
to establish national permanence: 

Then is it indeed time that we as a nation establish 
a complete system of free^ self-supporting indus- 
trial SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES in every part of our 
country. 

"The coming ideal of Democracy shall he to have 
the University go to every man and woman of the 
nation; and we dare add that it should go to them as 
free as air and as glorious as sunshine. In fact, the 
hands, while plucking from the Tree of Knozvledge 
should learn in the act how to cultivate the Tree to its 
fullest fruition." — Ferguson. 



Supplement 

A RETROSPECT AND A FORECAST. 

By LYDIA J. NEW CO MB COMINGS. 

"Each change we make in the program must he for 
the increase of our total human wealth. The abiding 
wealth of the world is human. It consists of beauti- 
ful men and beautiful women and beautiful children. 
The practical concern of life is with human beauty 
and human power. One must begin with the human 
end, with the perfecting of the human organism. — 
Dr. C. Hanford Henderson. 

"Success in life means that a man should repre- 
sent the best civilization of his time, that he should 
stand for intellectual strength, moral strength, that 
he should be strong in his affections, amenable to 
proper authority, mindful of his nature and artifi- 
cial limitations. Such a man would represent the 
finest flower of human life, his presence would be an 
inspiration and an example to all ivho come in con- 
tact luith him. The fact of his existence would mean 
that every part of him stands in absolute harmony 
with his zvhole organization." 

"All in all, the present methods teach too much 
and allow too little opportunity for development." — 
Dr. N. Oppenheim. 

"Any study that is not recreative to a growing child 
is always injurious." — Dr. John Dewey. 

"True education is organic; that is, it preserves 
and perfects the body, makes the mind more intelti- 



158 INDUSTRIAL AND 

gent, keeps the spirit sweet and sincere." — Marietta 
L. Johnson. 

ORGANIC EDUCATION. 

So far as we know the term Organic Education 
was first used by Dr. C. Hanford Henderson in his 
"Education and the Larger Life," and this book 
was the inspiration and ideal in the early days of 
the School of Organic Education at Fairhope, Ala- 
bama, the first and up to the present time the only 
school bearing this name ; although without doubt Dr. 
Henderson's Open Air School for Boys, at Samar- 
cand, N. C, deserves the name. 

The Fairhope School was started in a very small 
way in the fall of 1907, grew to such proportions in 
the first year that it was necessary to move to larger 
quarters three times during that year and before the 
end of the second year a gift from Mr. Joseph Fels 
having assured its continuance, it was deemed wise to 
incorporate and secure a permanent home for the 
school. This was done by six women, all greatly inter- 
ested in school affairs. As it was through Mr. Com- 
ings' enthusiasm and deep conviction that we must 
have a change in school methods, coupled with a small 
gift of money, that has made the school possible, 
it was incorporated as the Comings Memorial 
School of Education, but as the title was rather 
cumbersome the first two words were dropped, al- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 159 

though still retained legally and now it is known 
locally as the Organic School. 

For eight years it has shown the better way. 
Fairhope has proven a fertile spot for the planting 
of such an effort and Mrs. M. L. Johnson, who or- 
ganized the school and has always been at the head 
of it, has had a free hand to try out any and all of 
her ideas for a better school method, untrammelled 
by dictation of school boards or dictation of any 
sort and helped and encouraged in every way pos- 
sible by parents and trustees. Of course there are 
conservatives in the town, sticklers for the old sys- 
tem that is so inadequate for present needs, but 
what needed reform was ever introduced without 
opposition ? 

One summer Mrs. Johnson conducted a Teachers' 
Class and Demonstration School in connection with 
the University of Pennsylvania. Another summei 
she had a school in Arden, Delaware, besides lectur- 
ing each year in many of the larger cities. 

SOCIETIES OF ORGANIC EDUCATION. 

Early in 1913 a Society of Organic Education was 
formed in Philadelphia. It is a strong company of 
prominent men and women and has done a great 
deal of propaganda work and hopes to arouse suffi- 
cient enthusiasm to make a practical demonstration. 

A society was also formed in Fairhope in 1913 and 
now numbers over 200 members, more than half 
living outside of Fairhope. 



i6o INDUSTRIAL AND 

The Oranges in New Jersey have been greatly 
interested and last fall Organic Education was in- 
troduced in one of the public schools with a teacher 
at the head who was under Mrs. Johnson's training 
during the past year. 

For two years Mrs. Johnson has conducted a 
Summer School at Greenwich, Connecticut, and this 
and the Teachers' Course at Fairhope have been the 
only opportunities afforded for study of Mrs. John- 
son's methods. 

In 191 3, at Greenwich, The Fairhope League 
North, was formed, its object, to further Mrs. John- 
son's work. This it has done by almost wholly sup- 
porting the school at Fairhope, securing lecture en- 
gagements for Mrs. Johnson, and carrying on gen- 
eral propaganda work. Both the Summer School 
and the League seem to have become permanent ad- 
juncts of the Fairhope School. In December, 1913, 
at the request of the Fairhope League, Dr. John 
Dewey came to Fairhope to investigate the school 
and its methods and in his official report gave it his 
unqualified approval. More recently N. R. Baker, 
State Inspector of Rural Schools in Alabama, vis- 
ited the school and made a most favorable report to 
the State Superintendent. 

Others have become greatly interested in the 
idea, notably Helen Christine Bennett, who spent 
one winter in Fairhope, and through magazine and 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION i6i 

newspaper articles and leaflets the principles of Or- 
ganic Education are being widely disseminated. 

Early in 191 5 a Fairhope League, South, was 
formed in Fairhope for the same purpose as the 
League, North, and to prevent the school from be- 
ing moved to some northern point. 

A vacation school will be opened in Oak Park, 111., 
in June, 191 5, under the management of two teachers 
and a pupil teacher from the Organic School of Fair- 
hope. Mrs. M. L. Johnson will give a course of lec- 
tures during the week preceding and the week follow- 
ing the opening of this school. 

So the work has grown until Mrs. Johnson and 
the Organic School have won a national reputation 
and it seems quite probable that a number of similar 
schools will be opened in dififerent parts of the 
country very soon. 

WHAT IS ORGANIC EDUCATION? 

Not a system with a vast array of paraphernalia, 
but rather a point of view, an attempt to fit the 
school to the child rather than the child to the 
school ; an environment where the child will de- 
velop normally ; where he will grow mentally as he 
grows physically without conscious eflfort ; where 
the brain can become a strong physical organ before 
it is taxed with too early attempts at reasoning and 
the physical is not dwarfed by too long confinement 



i62 INDUSTRIAL AND 

at any one thing but instead is brought to its high- 
est possibilities ; where the child learns to read and 
to write when he is eager for it, even though it is 
not until he is eight or nine years of age ; where 
his eyesight is preserved, his hearing cultivated and 
his powers of observation developed ; where self- 
control is the ideal and liberty is allowed, not liberty 
that degenerates into license but the freedom that 
always yields to just laws; where the best interest 
of the child is considered and even his likes and 
dislikes taken into account ; where he is put in the 
classes best adapted to his needs whether they be 
all in one grade or not ; where, most of all, he does 
the work he enjoys doing, for there must be pleas- 
ure in work if there is to be profit; where there are 
no requirements for entering, no requirements for 
leaving, each one having credit for what he has ac- 
tually accomplished ; where there are no examina- 
tions for passing, no daily marks, hence no tempta- 
tion to deceive ; where the question is "What do 
you need?" not "What do you know?"; where, 
through justice, pupils learn to appreciate justice, 
through love they learn to love. 

"No profit goes zvhere is no pleasure ta'en, 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect." 

— Shakespeare. 
This is what Organic Education means today and 
as yet it has not been thoroughly demonstrated 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 163 

through the entire high school course and no at- 
tempt has been made toward self-support as, so 
far, it has only dealt with younger children, but it 
will be a magnificent preparation for the work, will 
make a substantial foundation on which to build a 
self-supporting college or university. It requires 
all the usual accessories of any well-equipped 
school; kindergarten, manual training, domestic 
science, gymnasium, playgrounds, gardens, basket 
ball, baseball, tennis; everywhere boys and girls 
working together, whether it be cooking a meal, 
building a house or on the play ground. 

We have this freedom of choice in our univer- 
sities and when to the gymnasium and games of 
the university we have added the real creative in- 
dustries then may we hope for a saner civilization, 
for men and women prepared for their life work — 
not drifting helplessly from one thing to another, 
the cultivated mind demanding constantly what the 
hands have never been taught to supply. Some 
time the ideal of this book will be realized and when 
a man (or woman) has a message for his fellow 
man he will not be dependent upon the caprice of 
others for his support, not forced to modify his 
message to those who dole out to him a pittance 
from their (?) wealth but will stand forth fearless, 
conscious of power, will be as God intended — "as 
young gods." 



1 64 INDUSTRIAL AND 

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, 

Our plea is not for vocational education although 
it may be a step toward something better but rather 
for industrial, or as it is sometimes called, prevo- 
cational education, not the training that prepares 
for a special trade but the training of the hand that 
aids in the development of mental power, the all- 
round development of brawn and brain that fits for 
the later activities of life whatever the field chosen 
may be. 

Vocational training has been going on for a long 
time and we hear of schools in connection with 
stores, railroads, shops, everywhere that an hour or 
two can be spared from work, all for greater effi- 
viency in the special line of work. As now con- 
ducted, whether this is regarded favorably or not 
depends upon the point of view. To the capitalist, 
the employer, it means better workers. To many of 
the labor unions, greater opportunity for exploita- 
tion. To the worker — is he anything more as a re- 
sult of this training than a better machine? 

"Survey" seems to be the word of the moment 
and we find commonwealths and communities turn- 
ing to self-study, studying both the needs of the 
worker and the opportunities for work and study. 
With this more comprehensive knowledge it would 
seem that much might be accomplished. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 165 

At a recent conference Vocational Training for 
Women and Girls was given great attention. "Two 
dominant notes characterized the program, one the 
importance of the home and the need of specific 
training for its management; the other, the dignity 
of labor and the need of training for efficiency in 
the industrial world." 

The demand for skilled labor becomes more and 
more insistent but with it is felt the lack of men 
suited for foremen because of lack of training in the 
entire trade. It is also difficult to get teachers for 
vocational schools who know how to teach as well 
as how to work. The plea for teachers who com- 
bine hand and brain work is still pertinent and we 
need it more than any other one thing to make our 
schools as helpful as they should be. 

In some schools where there is no industrial de- 
partment much is done toward vocational guidance 
by studying the work of eminent men and women 
and their service to humanity; then the present 
needs of the world, the country, the State, finally, 
of one's home environment and then the student's 
ability to in a measure contribute to that need. If 
with this academic training the hands could be 
taught to be skillful in general ways, it would be- 
come a splendid preparation for one's life work 
whether in some profession or at some form of 
skilled labor. 



i66 INDUSTRIAL AND 

Recently President Wilson appointed a Commis- 
sion on Vocational Education and as a result of 
their report a bill has been introduced into both 
branches of Congress giving help to the states in 
providing vocational education and in training per- 
sons to teach it with a view to stimulation rather 
than support. It must be spent to "fit for useful 
employment" and is intended to meet the needs of 
persons over fourteen years of age who have al- 
ready entered upon or are preparing to enter upon 
some phase of industrial pursuit. The commission 
declares "that of more than 25,000,000 workers less 
than I per cent, have had adequate preparation for 
their jobs." 

The bill creates a permanent Federal Board for 
Vocational Education with the Commisisoner of 
Education as its executive officer. Let us hope that 
this will forever put an end to the absurd notion 
prevailing in some of our cities that vocational 
schools should be taken from the control of school 
boards and be put under separate boards. We need 
the co-operation of the employer and the employee, 
with their knowledge of the needs of the work, and 
the school authorities, with their knowledge of 
methods of imparting instruction. 

The great difficulty seems to be that the skilled 
worker does not know how to impart his knowledge, 
and the teacher does not know how to do the work. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 167 

Hence our plea for industrial training through the 
entire academic course, that boys and girls may 
have skilled hands as well as skilled brains when they 
choose their life work whether it be a profession, a 
trade, or that of a home maker. Let us hope the 
Federal Board will have the broader vision and 
work for better men and women rather than better 
machines. 

PROGRESS IN TEN YEARS. 

We take pleasure in noting the progress made dur- 
ing the ten years since this book was first given to 
the public. In some of the schools mentioned the 
work has been discontinued, but no effort is ever lost 
and apparent failure often is really success. In other 
cases the work still prospers. 

RUSKIN COLLEGE. 

Formerly located at Glen Ellyn, 111., is now located 
at Ruskin, Fla. In 1907 its founders acquired a 
12,000 acre tract of land and have made the college 
the social center. By a plan of co-operation it re- 
ceives a liberal share of the receipts from the sale of 
land for its equipment and through its Industrial 
Guild the pupils are not only self-supporting, but can 
lay by a sufficient sum to make a fair start in life. 
While it is not wholly the work of the pupils, this 
seems to be the nearest approach to the ideal of this 



i68 INDUSTRIAL AND 

book that has been tried anywhere. It is self-sup- 
porting and self-equipping. It has no endowment 
and does not seek any. We quote from their Bul- 
letin: 

THE PRIMARY PURPOSE. 

"Industrial self-support while in college is only a 
secondary purpose in the maintenance of our industrial 
policy. The primary purpose is educational and cul- 
tural, and to lead to full support out of college. No 
one can attain to the best education or cidture zvithout 
the industrial discipline ivhich comes from manual 
labor and the doing of the ordinary tasks necessary to 
supply one's luants zvithotct depending upon others for 
either gratuitous or compensated service. 

"No young man zvill receive a diploma from the col- 
lege zvho has not learned to do the primitive tasks 
necessary to make a living zvith one's hands; such as 
farm zvork, care of live stock, and use of tools; and 
no young zvoman zvill receive a diploma until she has 
learned to do similar zvork in her line, covering all the 
practical duties of home-maker and home-keeper." 

The work at Dayton, Ohio, is so full of interest 
and encouragement that we quote at length from a 
report recently received: 

"That part of Dayton where the National Cash 
Register Co. is located, was once known as Slider- 
town and it lived up to everything that its name 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 169 

implied. Rents were low and no new houses were 
being erected, because there was no demand for 
property. 

"Yards were full of rubbish, tin cans and refuse. 
Conditions were so bad that employees were 
ashamed to say that they worked at the factory. 
The low dives with which the neighborhood 
abounded harbored gamblers, drunkards and thieves. 

"In addition, Slidertown was infested with shoe- 
less, homeless, lying, cursing, stealing, cigarette 
smoking boys who delighted in breaking the factory 
windows and in doing all the damage that they 
could. 

"A picket fence ten feet high was erected around 
the factory to keep the youngsters out, but even 
that availed nothing. The boys broke the fence first 
and the windows afterwards. 

"Owing to the unsightliness and badness of the 
surroundings the company was unable to procure the 
class of help needed to manufacture a perfect prod- 
uct. Skilled labor could not be induced to come to 
Slidertown. 

'Tt was necessary to change this state of affairs, 
and it was thought that the most practical thing to 
do would be to clean up the factory premises. Police 
protection was promised, the picket fence was re- 
moved, the buildings were painted, grass seed was 
sown and finally flowers and shrubs were planted. 



I70 INDUSTRIAL AND 

"But no sooner had this new work been com- 
menced when the bad boys again became trouble- 
some. The police protection which had been relied 
upon was inadequate. As rapidly as shrubbery was 
planted, the boys pulled it up. They trampled the 
lawns and continued to break windows. 

"The question then arose as to what was to be 
done with the boys. The president of the company 
was convinced that if given an opportunity, a boy will 
do what is right, and that a boy is bad just in propor- 
tion as his mind is unoccupied. This theory was put 
into practice, and instead of prosecuting the boys, a 
meeting place was set aside for them, and they were 
invited to visit the company. They were very sus- 
picious at first and ignored the invitation. Then 
they were told that there would be things to eat at 
the meeting. Needless to say, this meeting was well 
attended. 

"Now that the confidence of the neighborhood 
children had been obtained, schools and classes were 
started. The first attempt was a kindergarten for 
the little tots. Then followed classes in sewing and 
cooking for the girls. For the boys there were 
classes in clay modelling, wood carving, drawing and 
carpentry. Finally egg shell gardens were com- 
menced. These are nothing more than egg shells 
filled with earth, with seeds planted in them. 

"The children were immediately interested. They 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 171 

wanted bigger things to do, so a plot of ground was 
cleared off, plowed and harrowed, the boys were 
given seeds and tools and under a competent gar- 
dener were taught how to raise vegetables. This 
was in 1897. 

"They became very enthusiastic when they found 
that they were going to do something really worth 
while. The peculiar part of the proposition was that 
the ringleaders of the gangs that caused so much 
trouble were given charge of the work, and it was 
found that they led for the good as well as they had 
for the bad before. 

"The garden idea is one of the most practical 
things the company has ever done. The seeds and 
tools cost little and the boys do the work. It is far 
more helpful and economical to maintain the gar- 
dens than to be constantly replacing broken window 
glass in the factory. 

"The gardens have not only taught the boys in- 
dustry, but they have had a lasting moral influence 
upon them. 

"In 191 1 the boy gardeners were incorporated into 
a stock company. They have a state charter to raise 
and sell vegetables. They sell their produce, bank 
their money, make out bills and receipts, and at the 
end of the year they declare dividends. This gives 
them an excellent business training and teaches them 
many things that would take them years to absorb 



172 INDUSTRIAL AND 

after once they go into business. They handle the 
affairs of their corporation with very little outside 
assistance. 

"They duly elect officers, a Board of Directors, 
issue stock certificates and hold regular meetings to 
discuss crops and business. 

"Another practical side of the gardens is the fact 
that the boys supply their home tables with vege- 
tables during the summer months. That is quite an 
item, especially at this time, when the cost of living 
is so high. 

"In the season of 1913 there were 80 boys working 
in the garden and the value of the crop was over 
$1,991. 

"At the end of the season the boys and their par- 
ents are given a dinner. At that time $100 in prizes 
are awarded for the best gardens, up-keep of tools, 
deportment, attendance and the neatest, most com- 
plete record books. This is quite an incentive for 
the boys to put forth their best efforts. 

"After a successful two years' course, the boys 
are awarded diplomas. These are excellent recom- 
mendations should they apply for work at the fac- 
tory later on. Many of the men now working for 
us received their early training in the gardens. It 
would be interesting to hear what they have to say 
about the experience they gained in the gardens. 
Most of these boys have been successful, thus 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 173 

proving the president's belief in the possibilities of 
making useful citizens out of so-called bad boys. 

"Girls' gardens were started in 1912, not for the 
same reason that boys' gardens were originally 
started, however. The company merely wanted the 
neighborhood girls to get into the open air and to 
have the exercise of working in a garden. 

"Men's gardens were started at the same time, 
through the kindness of St. Mary's Institute. The 
college donated the ground and the N. C. R. Com- 
pany had it prepared for gardening. This is a great 
help to the working man in keeping down living ex- 
penses. 

"A school in the factory neighborhood has been 
making gardening a part of its regular course for 
the last 17 years. This was the first school in Amer- 
ica to do this work, although the idea has spread 
quite rapidly since that time. 

"The five steps in a "back to the farm" movement 
are: 

"ist. Egg Shell Gardens. 

"2nd. Boys' Gardens. 

"3rd. Back Yard Vegetable Gardens. 

"4th. Half Acre Farms. 

"5th. Truck Gardens. 

"After the boys graduate from the N. C. R. gar- 
dens another course in box furniture making is pro- 
vided. Here they are taught to handle tools. Out 



174 INDUSTRIAL AND 

of old packing cases that are of no further use, they 
are taught to make small pieces of furniture and bird 
boxes. This costs very little in proportion to the 
good that is accomplished. 

"If a boy should not care to follow farming as a 
means of livelihood, while he was raising his crop of 
vegetables he is also raising a crop of perseverance, 
industry, bodily strength and a good mental training. 
Things that will be of value to him in any line of 
business that he might enter. 

"Now that the boys of the neighborhood were 
working for the company instead of against it, it 
was comparatively easy to reach out through them 
to their parents and interest them in a general clean- 
up movement. 

"Prizes were given for the best results in front and 
back yard efifects, window boxes, porch effects, 
fences, streets and alleys. This work has not stopped 
by any means. There are now seven Improvement 
Associations in South Park, as Slidertown is now 
known. These organizations are governed by the 
neighborhood people, but the company lends every 
encouragement, by providing seeds, bulbs, plants and 
shrubs at cost and by giving substantial prizes an- 
nually." 

The following is from a recent letter from N. O. 
Nelson in regard to the School at Le Claire, 111. : "We 
started the Educational School to give a trade and 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 175 

education at the same time. Half time on each. 
The work in the long run to pay the upkeep of the 
school and board. The sole purpose was to give as 
much education as any young man wanted, at the 
same time making him a competent workman. It 
worked very well, was popular. We had as high as 
fifty at a time. They worked in our various shops 
and also on the farm. 

We continued it two years and until we all agreed 
that nearly all who came were seeking a higher edu- 
cation with a view to intellectual employment. 
Scarcely any intended to follow manual work. As 
the purpose intended could not be attained, we 
closed the school after two years. 

I am convinced that at this stage of civilization 
manual vocations and advanced school education 
will not go together." 

What is this "stage of civilization?" Simply that 
we retain our pagan ideals ; that one who labors with 
the hands is still considered inferior to one who has 
in some way obtained "intellectual employment"; 
hence the school as a "stepping stone." Many a girl 
who would make a fine helper in a home is degraded 
into an inferior teacher, many a fine mechanic or 
farmer into a third-rate preacher or lawyer by our 
false standards. 

No account of work accomplished, however incom- 
plete, can leave out the Continuation Schools of Cin- 



176 INDUSTRIAL AND 

cinnati, and Mr. Wm. Wirt's work in Gary, Ind., and 
New York City. The combination of industrial and 
academic training, the use of already existing manu- 
facturing plants, the utilization of room whereby 
double the number of children can be accommodated 
than were under the old plan, the recognition of a 
child's right to pursue other lines of work than those 
provided by the school, show wonderful progress. 

Our Open-Air Schools, Public Playgrounds, To- 
mato Clubs, Corn Clubs and a host of other out-door 
activities are no longer questioned and no longer 
reserved for the abnormal. We have learned that 
conditions that are good for the aenemic, the tuber- 
cular, the child who is in any way below the normal, 
are equally good for the normal child to keep him at 
his best. The Open-Air School at Bryn Mawr is a 
notable example of this. 

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING. 

The district and county agricultural schools seem 
to be well established now, not only in Wisconsin and 
Minnesota, but in many other states, but in no case 
so far as we can learn are they even partially self- 
supporting. Where we had small beginnings and 
very few of them ten years ago. we now have large 
successes and the acknowledged need of industrial 
education, if not the practice of it, has become prac- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 177 

tically universal. Let us hope that some plan may 
be evolved whereby it may be free to every one. 

PREVENTION OF IMMORALITY IN OUR HIGH SCHOOLS. 

One phase of the value of skilled hands and skilled 
brains has been almost entirely overlooked, its help 
in the prevention of immorality in our high schools, 
something that is becoming quite appalling. Every- 
where we find teachers inquiring as to the cause and 
the remedy. The cause is easily found. Natural 
instincts in the young. The solution of the difftculty is 
not so simple, but we venture the opinion that it will 
not be found in the teaching of sex hygiene or in 
home training until both parent and teacher better 
understand the nature of young people. It is the 
prostitution of God's supreme gift to man, man's 
highest attribute, the creative instinct debased 
through ignorance. 

The creative impulse which under proper condi- 
tions would result in sacred, happy parenthood, but 
which when unrestrained becomes immorality, would 
in our young people, under proper direction, be- 
come a wonderful force in their lives leading on io 
greater and greater achievements. 

We have realized this somewhat, and we often 
hear teachers speak of pupils working off superflu- 
ous energy on the playgrounds, but it needs more 
than basketball, baseball and tennis, fine as they are. 



178 INDUSTRIAL AND 

It requires something that is more than recreative. 
It must be something- that is distinctly creative to 
satisfy and stem this rising tide, and nothing at such 
times can take the place of some well-directed indus- 
try where they can create new designs and new forms 
and feel the uplift of accomplishment instead of 
wasting this gift. 

Our schools must deal with life as we find it in 
order to make life, both social and individual, better. 
Teach a child to respect his own body and we pre- 
vent disease and immorality. Teach him to respect 
the rights of others and he cannot become a crim- 
inal. Interest him in his surroundings, show him the 
causes of existing social evils and he will grow up 
with a desire to remedy these things. Ignorance is 
not a preventive. Knowledge is the only safeguard. 

THE ARMY OF THE UNEMPLOYED 

This still increases. We find this in a recent article. 
It gives the situation so exactly that we deem com- 
ment unnecessary. "During the summer months 
these armies of unemployed are not so much in evi- 
dence, but those who think the armies are perma- 
nently disbanded are grievously in error. The men 
who form our unemployed armies all through this 
country are becoming socially self-conscious, and 
they cannot be permanently disbanded until a way 
Is found to eliminate the causes of unemployment. 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION i79 

San Diego met the I. W. W. free speech army with 
rails and tar and feathers. Sacramento met the un- 
employed army with fire engines and pick handles. 
Thus they "solved" their problems. When this army 
comes again, as come it will, shall we have a more 
sane solution of the problem?" 

Many see the solution of all these problems in 
some form of economic or political reform, but we 
fear none of these reforms, much as they are needed, 
will be carried to a final success until we have really 
educated a few generations of men and wom.en who 
are capable of seeing clearly all sides of a question 
and deciding it on its merits free from prejudice and 
uninfluenced by greed. 

"Let me lay emphasis on the opportunity now pre- 
sented in the United States for observing and, if we 
are wise, aiding in what I think is the grandest oppor- 
tunity ever presented of developing the -finest race the 
world has ever known out of the vast mingling of 
races brought here by immigration. 

"So may ive hope for a stronger and better race if 
right principles are followed, a magnificent race far 
superior to any preceding it." — Luther Burbank. 

A RACE OF AMERICANS. 

They tell us that in the West, notably in California, 
there is a new race coming in. They are losing the 
characteristics of their ancestors from foreign coun- 



i8o INDUSTRIAL AND 

tries, are taller, better developed, more intellectual, 
a race of Americans. Will we have the wisdom to 
train these superior beings who show this great im- 
provement in spite of wrong conditions, into men 
and women of such mighty stature, physically, men- 
tally, morally, spiritually, that the whole world will 
recognize and follow? It is our privilege. Nothing 
but the best for every boy and girl in the whole land 
should satisfy us, and to accomplish this the hand 
must be cultivated with the head, and it must be 
possible for every child to have every opportunity for 
development that he is capable of using. 

And what of our motto 

"More for Schools and Less for War?" 

In the war now raging all the horrors of the dark- 
est ages have been reproduced. Cities destroyed, 
women outraged, children maimed. Most unbeliev- 
able things are reported. So far one ray of hope 
comes from all the darkness and carnage. The death 
knell of the liquor traffic has been sounded. Women 
are asserting themselves and demanding that war 
shall cease forever, and who have a better right, for 
who suffer more than they at such times? 

Let us hope that all this is but "The death throes 
of our wornout order, the birth pangs of the new," 
and that the time is coming when our motto may m- 
deed be "More for schools and naught for war." 

Fairhope, April, 191 5. 



I 



A Child Cry 

By Netta M. Breakenridge. 

AM a child, O do not tie me up 

To schools, and desks, and books misunderstood, 
When I am yearning to run out a-Held, 

To search the quiet of the dim, sweet wood. 



And O — sweet MotJier — do not set me sums, 
And those stiff, staring copies of some word, 

Let me count meadows full of clover blooms, 
And learn the sweet, free singing of a bird. 

For I have found a Teacher to my mind, 
She whispers siveet instruction zvhen at rest 

I stretch broimi arms — bare feet in cool, deep grass 
That feels the heart throb 'neath her great ivarm 
breast. 

Then when the trees, the flowers, the sky, the birds, 
Have taught their true, strong lessons, I'll come in 

With eager, hungry questioning, and say, 
"The books, sweet Mother — quick, I must begin T 



i82 INDUSTRIAL AND 

Daily Program of the 

School of Organic Education, 

Fairhope, Alabama 

APPROVED BY MARIETTA L. JOHNSON AND HER 
ASSOCIATE TEACHERS. 

"The proper work of education is not to prune and 
thwart and bend and force. It is rather to keep hands 
off as tvell as harm off." 

Organic Education depends so largely upon the 
needs of the individual child and the ability of the 
teacher to understand and satisfy those needs that 
a formal program for the lower grades becomes im- 
possible, but it is hoped that this account of daily 
work may prove helpful to those who are seeking 
greater freedom, more elastic methods. 

KINDERGARTEN. 

Much the same work will be found as in all kin- 
dergartens except that the children indicate their 
preferences and the teacher follows. 

For instance, at nine o'clock, the opening hour, 
most of the children are at the tables absorbed in 
their work, some have been working ten or fifteen 
minutes perhaps. Sometimes it is card board con- 
struction, sometimes color work ; often the two com- 
bined. Shall they be disturbed and gathered into a 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 183 

circle ? Not at all. That can come later, when they 
want a change, but every morning the circle, with 
its songs, sense games and stories, is introduced and 
the children have a happy time. In fact, they- are 
happy and busy all the time. As a rule when a child 
is deeply interested in either work or play, he is not 
interrupted. 

Each one has his own place for his own things in 
the closet and when through using them is taught 
to put them away neatly. To prevent friction they 
are taught to respect the rights of each other, and this 
results in good manners, politeness. 

Out of doors they have a sand pile and swings 
and are allowed to use a few pieces of the out-door 
gymnasium with the aid of the teacher. At such 
times as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, St. Val- 
entine's Day and St. Patrick's Day their work is 
in harmony with the special occasion and there is 
never a dull moment. 

FIRST LIFE CLASS. 

This is really an advanced kindergarten. Here we 
find the most radical departure from conventional 
methods. The children are from six to eight years of 
age. No books are used by the pupils except as the 
older ones are taught to read and then only as they 
express a desire for it. The work is almost wholly 
self-initiated. They have wood construction and 



i84 INDUSTRIAL AND 

gardening added to the kindergarten work. Lum- 
ber, saws, nails and rules are provided and they 
make chairs, book cases, racks, houses, all of their 
own designing and according to their own meas- 
urements. Some are very crude ; others well fin- 
ished, but each is commended as havuig done his 
best and encouraged to further effort. Most of this 
work is done out of doors, as it was found that it 
disturbed the pupils in the other rooms in the build- 
ing. The clay and color work is remarkably good. 
Some May baskets decorated with tissue paper 
showed very good taste in the selection of colors. 

In their gardens each one decides upon the size 
desired, measures it off, with assistance if needed, 
and takes entire care of it. Liquid and dry meas- 
ures are provided that they may gain some idea of 
values in this way. 

They have toys, balls, bean bags and have been 
especially interested in making kites. They use 
chairs and tables for automobiles and street cars. 
The tables turned upside down and filled with 
chairs and these occupied by children give them 
pleasure for a great many hours. The tables and 
chairs were made in the manual training depart- 
ment and are guiltless of paint or varnish or it 
might not be wise to do this, but why surround 
children with things too good to use? 

At one time they were greatly interested in mak- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 185 

Ing reins ornamented with bells. A number of them 
were provided for the Christmas sale and were dis- 
posed of readily. They were made of coarse, soft 
twine and were done in a loose chain stitch, using 
the fingers instead of a crochet needle. Each one 
was allowed twelve yards of twine, first measuring 
one yard on the edge of the table with a foot rule, 
then using this yard measure twelve times. They 
also string beads of different colors, beginning with 
two, five or ten of each color, thus gaining number 
conception. 

The art teacher has put crayon drawings of famil- 
iar objects on the board and some of the copies are 
surprisingly good. Every day the pupils are gathered 
into a circle for some kind of group work but not at 
any stated time. 

Their greatest delight is in stories, read or told 
to them. Often they illustrate these in the sand box, 
and with clay or crayon, sometimes dramatize 
them. We name a few of the books that are found 
specially interesting, both when read to them 
and as they handle the books themselves. Some of 
the children can repeat almost the entire story and 
love to do this with the open book and pictures be- 
fore them : 

The Children's Book, by Horace Scudder. 

Nonsense Book, by Edward Lear. 

Peter Rabbit Series, by Beatrix Potter. ; 



i86 INDUSTRIAL AND 

Tom Thumb and Johnny Crow's Garden, Illus- 
trated by Leslie Brooks. 

Caldecott Picture Books. 

In My Nursery, by Laura E. Richards. 

Child Lore and Dramatic Reader, published by 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Work is planned when it seems necessary, the 
teacher is always ready to help when needed, but 
it seldom happens that the children are not eager 
for something of their own devising. 

SECOND LIFE CLASS. 

The first half hour in the morning is devoted to 
singing, folk dancing and out-door gymnastics, not 
as a rest when the children are tired from mental 
occupations, but as a means of development at a 
time when they are at their best. In the afternoon 
they have a quiet half hour before beginning their 
more active work. A fundamental conception of 
number is gained largely through use in other occu- 
pations and much time is devoted to the mechanical 
operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication, di- 
vision, decimals and compound numbers. Their 
reading consists mainly of historical and geographi- 
cal stories and legends, with very simple stories for 
the youngest pupils. The children of one class were 
greatly interested in the French and Indian War and 
went to the gullies where they built forts and repro- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION i8;r 

duced many of the scenes. Members of another class 
built a railroad of which they had read and then a 
miniature Panama Canal. Another time it may be 
something quite different that holds their attention 
and interest. The gullies are a never-ending source of 
delight for nature study, dramatic representation or 
"just a good time." 

There is work in both oral and written expres- 
sion. They have larger gardens than the First Life 
Class and are given simple instruction in ~ botany,, 
soils and germination. They go to the manual 
training building for their wood working. They 
are from nine to eleven years of age. 

THIRD LIFE CLASS. 

Here we find the pupils from twelve to thirteen 
years of age, corresponding to the usual grammar 
grades, and preparing for the high school. They 
share the half hour of singing and folk dancing with 
the Second Life, use books, have gardens and are 
allowed the full use of the gymnasium. They have 
more difficult manual training work and the older 
ones have cooking. 

Botany, nature study and the sciences receive 
great attention. The use of clay is encouraged for 
relief maps and in moulding objects. They read' 
aloud from both story books and books of history, 
geography, and science, and illustrate and dramatize 



^88 INDUSTRIAL AND 

much of their work, and so are led along by easy and 
natural methods until at fourteen years of age they 
are well prepared for high school ; and besides the us- 
ual book knowledge have had experiences which 
tend to give well developed bodies, deftness of hand 
and a general knowledge and culture. 

THE HIGH SCHOOL. 

The Course of Study does not differ radically 
from that in any good high school and when one 
has finished the course he is ready for college or 
university. 

The pupils, wherever possible, work in self-or- 
ganized groups and decide for themselves what 
work will be most beneficial. Those in the English 
class, for instance, are writing books. Each pupil 
selects a title and writes the first chapter, then passes 
it on for a chapter by each of the others. When it re- 
turns to the first one he or she will write the final 
chapter, cover it according to individual taste, and 
own the book. By the time this is finished some 
other work will have been planned. In botany 
they bring to class, for analyzing, flowers of their 
own choosing, and each one selects those preferred 
for an herbarium. The same freedom of choice 
is allowed in the drawing class and rarely are two 
pupils drawing from the same object. Those in the 
biology class are raising pigs. In the chemistry 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 189 

class one boy is experimenting with nickel plating, 
another with manufacturing hydrogen. So the in- 
dividuality of the pupil is cultivated and the work 
becomes more vital as well as less formal. The out- 
door gymnasium is fairly well equipped. They have 
basket ball, baseball and tennis. The gardens are 
quite extensive. 

The greatest liberty is allowed the pupils. They 
pass about and in and out of the room, speak quietly 
to each other, even prepare their lessons out of 
doors if they wish. A strict regard for the rights 
of others is maintained and pupils who have been 
in the school some time can be trusted absolutely, 
others who come and go, mistake liberty for license 
and occasionally abuse the privileges given them. 

Written tests are frequently given, but no exami- 
nations for passing from one grade to another. 
Pupils are put in classes best adapted to their needs 
regardless of grades. No desks are used in the 
school, tables and chairs being substituted. 

DOMESTIC SCIENCE. 

There are five cooking classes and they give a 
noon lunch each day to from fifteen to twenty-five 
people. They plan the menu, buy the supplies, al- 
ways taking into account what is already on hand 
and are limited to ten cents per person. Three of 
the classes work under the supervision of a teacher. 



I90 INDUSTRIAL AND 

two of them cook and serve the meal alone. Us- 
ually there are two vegetables, one of them often 
served as a salad, and bread and butter with either 
dessert or soup. No guest is limited as to quan- 
tity. This department is self-supporting. Sewing 
is also taught to those who care for it. 

MANUAL TRAINING. 

In this we find a great variety of work, from the 
simplest objects made by the Second Life Class to 
well-finished writing desks, book cases, tables, and 
porch swings. The tables and many of the chairs 
used in the school are made here. As everywhere, 
the pupils are allowed great freedom of choice. 

This occupies the largest and best equipped of 
the buildings, of which there are four; one for the 
Kindergarten and Domestic Science (this was built 
almost entirely by the pupils), one for the Life 
Classes and one for the High School and Chemical 
Laboratory. 

THE teachers' TRAINING CLASS. 

This gives a thorough course in History of Edu- 
cation, Psychology, Child Study and Methods, with 
practice teaching in the Kindergarten and Life 
Classes. 

For the closing exercises this year the entire 
school will take part in an out-door presentation of 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 191 

the Pied Piper of Hamlin. This was suggested by 
a member of the Training Class and will be worked 
out by the entire class. 

This is just a brief outline of what is done from 
day to day in the spring of 1915. Another year the 
application may be quite different but the underlying 
principles remain unchanged. Self-control and self- 
initiative are the watchwords throughout the school. 




